A. Response: Your question is difficult to answer; in fact, all I can give is my opinion because there are no definitive answers to either question. I won't be surprised to see lead fishing weights banned, but it will probably be done more for good public relations and suspected harm rather than on good science or fact. There are substitute products already on the market.

I don't know what you are including in your 300,000,000 pound figure, so can't even hazard a guess as to how much of this reaches the environment, where it is "lost," or how long the environment can "handle" it. But remember, all of that lead was originally in the environment before it was removed, used, and discarded by man, so I would suspect that if it is spread somewhat uniformly over the globe, the environment can handle it again. This is not to say, that problems cannot arise when high concentrations occur in restricted areas. In this case, toxic conditions may occur for selected biota or harmful concentrations can be transferred through food webs leading to humans.

Don't forget, these are my opinions, not fact.