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Hunting season in Saskatchewan has wrapped up, but a new study suggests the risks of lead exposure don’t necessarily end when an animal is harvested and butchered.
Research led by Canadian Light Source staff scientist Adam Leontowich found lead-based ammunition could leave behind tiny particles in hunted meat fragments so small they can be difficult to detect.
“You can process an animal really carefully and still end up with lead particles you’d never notice just by looking at the meat,” Leontowich said.
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Leontowich, who describes himself as an avid hunter and firearms enthusiast, said the idea for the research started in an everyday place: a store aisle. He said he was at Cabela’s when he noticed lead-free, all-copper cartridges for his .308 rifle.
“That got me thinking … I’m always looking, I’m a gun enthusiast, and I’m an avid hunter,” he said. “And I thought, What is this? Why would I need this?”
Listen to Adam Leontowich on The Evan Bray Show:
He said copper bullets were designed to expand on impact and were “just as effective” for hunting, but with one major difference: “They contain no lead, so they actually don’t end up dispersing any lead into the meat that you could end up consuming.”
While research into lead fragments in game had existed for decades, Leontowich said his team used the Canadian Light Source’s synchrotron X-ray capabilities to see details that weren’t previously possible.
“We have the best X-ray tools right here in Saskatoon,” he said, adding that the technology allowed researchers “to really peer deep into materials” and show “just how many and just how small of these fragments there could be.”
Leontowich said the project involved a peer-reviewed proposal process to access the facility, with scientists applying twice a year and explaining why they needed a synchrotron instead of conventional lab tools.
In earlier work, he said he tested ammunition using ballistic gelatin, a tissue simulant commonly used by law enforcement and manufacturers.
For the newest study, he said the research moved to real-world samples: “real white tail deer ribs,” obtained from a collaborator in the Northwest Territories, and “a sharp-tailed grouse breast,” which he hunted himself with a 12-gauge shotgun.
“What we saw is that this lead-based ammunition … can disperse hundreds of 1000s of little micro or nano particles of lead,” he said, mostly within the impact zone.
But he said the size of those fragments raised another concern that in the final moments of an animal, some particles could potentially move beyond the immediate wound area.
“So even though most hunters will cut away the impact shot, where the shot is hit, that doesn’t necessarily save you from some amount of lead exposure,” he said.
When asked about health impacts, Leontowich compared the risks of lead dust and said there was no safe level of lead intake.
“Everything we know about lead and human health and animal health is bad, so you should never knowingly consume lead,” he said.
He pointed to research linking blood lead levels to impacts on children’s IQ, and said the levels observed in the samples were “already concerning for human health.”
Leontowich said the biggest challenge for hunters was the lack of an easy way to test their own meat for microscopic fragments. He said even when the same samples were measured using hospital X-rays, “these are so microscopic,” they’re difficult to detect.
Still, he said, hunters have options.
“But the solution is really simple,” he said, “all-copper bullets for rifles,” and alternatives for shotguns, including “steel shot, or bismuth shot or tungsten matrix.” He said many were compatible with existing firearms and effective for hunting.
He also acknowledged cost. He said lead-free rifle ammunition could cost about $20 more per box of 20 than lead-based options. Still, he argued that if it were used only for hunting, not frequent target shooting, the increase might be manageable.
Some jurisdictions had moved further, he noted, citing Denmark as an example of a country that had pursued a broader lead ammunition ban. But Leontowich stressed his message wasn’t political.
“I just want to show people what’s happening in the meat,” he said, adding he didn’t see the same concern with lead ammunition used for target shooting into a berm, but that “when you mix lead and food, that has the potential to cause harm.”
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