62
Amounts of lead from
ammunition in the environment
and its availability to wildlife
AMMUNITION DEPOSITED INTO THE ENVIRONMENT
(i.e. OF RELEVANCE TO EXPOSURE ROUTES 1 AND 3)
The sport shooting of live quarry, clays and other targets is
popular in the UK and most of the ammunition used is lead.
Two thirds of the rural land in the UK is reportedly managed
by shooting providers for a combination of reasons including
shooting; active shoot management is undertaken on 2 million
hectares of this (12% of the UK’s rural land) (PACEC 2006). Many
areas not managed specifically for shooting activities, including
farmland and the foreshore, are also shot over for sport shooting,
subsistence hunting and/or the control of pest animals (e.g.
pigeons and corvids).
Each lead shotgun cartridge may contain between 100 and
600 lead gunshot depending on gunshot size, with a typical
30 g load containing approximately 300 individual number 6
gunshot. As gunshot leave the barrel of the gun they spread out
thus even if the target is hit, most gunshot will miss. Only a small
proportion of the gunshot from a single shotgun cartridge may
be retrieved within a killed animal (see e.g. Cromie et al. 2010,
Pain et al. 2010). Most lead gunshot fired from shotguns falls into
the environment.
The tonnage of lead ammunition deposited annually into the
UK environment is not precisely known. There are no official
estimates of numbers of shooting participants, numbers of
birds or other animals shot, or cartridges fired. However, broad
estimates can be made using some published (e.g. PACEC 2006)
and unpublished (e.g. shooting media, web articles and social
media) sources. An estimated 28 million birds (gamebirds,
wildfowl and pigeons) are shot annually in the UK (based upon
PACEC 2006 and Aebischer 2013). The majority of gunshot
used to kill these birds is composed of lead. Although there are
restrictions on the use of lead for shooting wildfowl and/or over
wetlands in the UK countries there is poor compliance with the
legislation, at least in England (Cromie et al. 2002, 2010, 2015).
In addition, wildfowl form only a small proportion of gamebirds
shot. Assuming an average of 3-8 shots per bird (based on
shooting web articles and social media) and 30 g gunshot per
cartridge this represents about 2,500 to 6,700 tonnes of lead
gunshot fired at gamebirds annually, most of which will fall
into the environment. This excludes the gunshot used on the
hundreds of thousands of rabbits and hares (combined), and
numerous animals shot as part of pest control activities.
For target shooting, including clay pigeon shooting, the vast
majority of the ammunition used is likely to be lead, probably to
conform with International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF)
rules (Thomas and Guitart 2013). In 1991, it was reported that
220 million clay pigeons were used in the UK with at least one
shot fired at each (B Carter, Clay Pigeon Shooting Association,
pers. comm.; cited in Mellor and McCartney 1994). With a 28 g
load commonly used to shoot clays and a number 8 cartridge
(containing approximately 400 gunshot) this represented
a minimum annual release of 6,160 tonnes of lead gunshot
(approximately 88 billion individual gunshot) at the time, with
a predicted rise in the popularity of clay shooting.
This suggests that approximately 8,000-13,000 tonnes of lead
gunshot are used in the UK each year. This estimate is not
precise and depends upon the accuracy of the assumptions in
the estimate. It has been suggested by knowledgeable sources
from the shooting community that approximately 5,000
tonnes a year of gunshot is used for all shooting combined
although we have been unable to source any published data
to substantiate this. These two figures are broadly similar and
irrespective of the precise figure, thousands of tonnes of lead
gunshot are deposited, and accumulate, in the UK environment
annually, representing tens of billions of individual pellets.
Ammunition used for target shotgun shooting is concentrated
in and around target shooting clubs. Ammunition used for live
quarry shooting is distributed, to variable degrees, across large
tracts of the countryside.
The tonnage of bullets used annually (excluding those used
by the police and/or the military) is considerably smaller,
probably in the range of a few hundred tonnes a year. In areas
of intensive lead bullet usage (e.g. firing ranges), bullets or
fragments thereof are found depositedwithin the environment
(e.g. Vantelon et al. 2005, Lewis et al. 2001). The authors are not
aware of UK studies investigating the density of bullets in the
environment in areas of lower intensity of usage such as places
in which other more “typical” UK live quarry shooting activities
occurs. However, it is probable that bullets that either miss their
targets or travel through their targets are deposited within the
environment, most likely penetrating whatever substrate by a
distance dependent on the density of the substrate they hit,
and the velocity and mass of the projectile.
Deborah J. Pain, Ruth Cromie & Rhys E. Green