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A ban on lead in fishing?

Anyone remember seeing these? 😉
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Stephen Crowhurst said:
Price per tonne of Tungsten is roughly $340 vs $1900 for lead.
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I’m pretty sure you’re missing a couple of decimal places there Stephen.
Tungsten is many times more expensive than lead. I’m out of touch with it all now but but I’d say lead is probably around £1.50 kg ish and tungsten I’d guess to be 20x that amount and that’s scrap value.

Tungsten would be a better lead than lead as it’s even denser.


Unfortunately though that’s the only advantage as It also melts at stupidly high temperatures and is incredibly hard as nails to machine.

If it was ever to hit the tackle shops in 2-3oz pears, we’d probably be paying £50 a piece for them.
 
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I would say that, in my opinion, lead weights are better? One because of the cost of brass or tungsten. Two because of the size difference of the lead free metal weights and of stonze weights, 3 because of the amount of carbon per tonne of cement for the concrete weights, so use lead and don’t throw them away into the water we fish. 👍🏻
 
Richard Isaacs said:
I’m pretty sure you’re missing a couple of decimal places there Stephen.
Tungsten is many times more expensive than lead. I’m out of touch with it all now but but I’d say lead is probably around £1.50 kg ish and tungsten I’d guess to be 20x that amount and that’s scrap value.

Tungsten would be a better lead than lead as it’s even denser.


Unfortunately though that’s the only advantage as It also melts at stupidly high temperatures and is incredibly hard as nails to machine.

If it was ever to hit the tackle shops in 2-3oz pears, we’d probably be paying £50 a piece for them.
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Look it up. Those are the rough prices per tonne, not the value per tonne at the scrap yard.

As you say it’s denser, with it being denser it behaves differently and is more subtle which is why it’s great for jig heads.
It’s not a pipe dream, it’s already a thing. We’re using them commonly for beads in Carp rigs, float Olivettes and in lure fishing.

They are as you say expensive in heavier sizes but that’s party due to the manufacturing. If we made the weight from raw rod then encapsulated it in resin or something to make it the same profile/size I believe we could make them significantly cheaper. There probably better alloys to choose etc and this problem may never come to pass.
 
I won’t argue with you Stephen on it as I’m out of touch on it all but I will say I’ve had a lot of involvement with the metal and it’s never been cheap from my experience to buy in any form
 
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The effects of lead in drinking water have been know for decades, which is why it was banned from new installations in 1992.

Lead is a serious threat to public health, long term exposure is known to be associated with conditions such as hypertension, renal disease, digestive diseases, and cognitive decline. Lead is capable of crossing the placental barrier, harming the foetus, and is known to cause developmental delay and learning difficulties in children.

Lead concentrations in water from natural sources can be around 2ppb (parts per billion), whereas in water supplies that are yet to be updated, since the ban, can be up to 50ppb.

As for pollution. The argument that fishing lead isn't high on the list of things causing pollution in rivers, is a thin end of the wedge excuse to excuse the damage we may be doing. It's like suggesting that dropping a crisp packet in Birmingham isn't a problem, because bin bags are lining the streets during the refuse workers strike.

If there were an alternative to lead - which there would be if a ban came into force - I'd be all for it.

.
 
Ralph Harris said:
If I remember correctly the main problem with lead shot was the containers it came in. Many were not single shot dispensers and there were many shot spills in areas where swans deliberately picked up and small stones and swallowed them. The shot was the sort of size swans would choose. They use stones to grind their food in their gullet, obviously grinding lead shot in the gullet greatly increases adsorption into the body.
At the time the response by anglers and the tackle trade was excellent. There was alternatives on the market quickly and by the time lead shot was banned most anglers had already moved to the alternatives.
I think the university paper that looked into lead poisoning in swans was actually supported by an angling club I think they provided a stretch of water where angling was not allowed as a control. ( I hope I’m not imagining this)

But all that is now in the past and we should do our best to limit the amount of lead in the aquatic environment. I had not heard of the practice of dropping leads on the take. This is utterly ridiculous, we might just as well paint a target on our heads. This practice should definitely be banned. I cannot think that any decent angler would consider this method.
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There is at least one person, who shall remain nameless, who built a multi million pound business around the initial sale of leads. Of course that was only the start of the business but those leads were going somewhere weren't they for people to keep buying them!
 
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