Environment
Debate continues on how to get the lead out – of ammo
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By BROOKE KANSIER
Capital News Service
LANSING – Hunting is killing Michigan wildlife – and not just in the way you think. It’s because a toxic metal – lead – has been a hunting staple for centuries. Despite being removed from products like paint, gasoline and pesticides, lead remains popular for shot and bullets due to its malleability and tendency to fracture, making for bigger wound tracks and faster kills. That fracturing has its downsides, however. Lead fragments in gut piles – left behind when hunters lighten the load to carry their kill out of the woods – can put wildlife at risk of ingesting remnants of the toxin, according to the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin.