Lead is Bad for the Environment, Think Before You Shoot

The bald eagle, symbol of America, is currently being killed by the most stereotypical American thing: lead poisoning from eating bullets. If that wasn't the most American thing you've read in your life, hold on to your hats as we explain how exactly the eagles are getting their beaks on enough bullets to poison them.

Bullets. More specifically, bullet fragments from hunted game. While bald eagles more often than not eat aquatic life, they've also been known to hunt small mammals, especially when fish are scarce. In an act of desperation, they will even scavenge food from other birds or animals, which includes but is not limited to the shot carcass of a deer or other wild game typically hunted with guns. The lethal dose of lead for humans (LD50) is somewhere between 4 and 5 grams per kg of bodyweight. Even though eagles are not people, the closest we can estimate is based on human body weight. Bald eagles weigh between 10 and 15 pounds on average, and a kilogram is roughly 2.2 pounds which puts them at about 17 to 27 grams of lead for lead poisoning to kill them and far less than that to cause negative side effects.

If you think that's a lot, consider that the weight of a 9mm bullet ranges between 5 and 10 grams depending on make style and cartridge size. Obviously, the whole bullet isn't made of lead, but they do contain an amount of lead. Even if they were composed of no lead, they're still a choking and obstruction risk for anything that consumes them considering that bullets are not made of digestible materials.

According to wildlife rehabilitators, an eagle that has been poisoned is something obvious. Effects of lead poisoning in people include but are not limited to difficulties with memory or concentration, headache, abdominal pain, mood disorders, and issues with fertility. Eagles are a bit different, they can develop blindness, tremors, and can lose their ability to fly. Apparently, a study published last year found that nearly half of both bald and golden eagles across the US tested positive for chronic lead poisoning and in addition, lead poisoning is the third leading cause of death for the species in Michigan.

The study also indicates that the main source of lead that is poisoning these animals is from lead ammunition embedded in the carcasses of game animals and sometimes due to entrails left behind from cleaning game in the field. Is this the first time that bald eagles (and other wildlife) have been threatened by something we did? Of course not. You may have heard of a little chemical called dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or maybe you're familiar with its abbreviation DDT. DDT is a colorless, tasteless and near odorless compound originally developed to be used as an insecticide. There's a reason we don't use DDT anymore: it became infamous by 1962 and was banned in 1972 for agricultural use. Why? DDT was doing what it was supposed to do a little too well - killing bugs. Unfortunately, these same bugs were then ingested by fish, small mammals, and birds resulting in them getting poisoned as well. Of course, that wasn't the only mode of exposure, as DDT could also be absorbed into the soil and carried through water into crops and water sources, so one way or another everyone and everything was consuming some amount of DDT. While some animals died, others had severe adverse reactions. Specifically for the eagles, it was a decrease in population due to eggshell thinning. As you can imagine, a thinner shell is weaker and more susceptible to breaking before the embryo is viable and can survive outside of the shell and it did not bode well for the eagles whose population saw a significant decline during the peak usage of DDT. The more you know.

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