Q.
With the banning of lead shot and gasoline and so
many other toxic items, do you feel the banning of
the lead fishing weight will come sooner than later?
With three hundred million pounds of lead being lost
every year, how many more years do you think our
environment can handle?
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.
If you have a question, please feel free to contact me.
~ C. E. (Bert) Cushing, aka Streamdoctor
105 W. Cherokee Dr.
Estes Park, CO 80517
Phone: 970-577-1584
Email: streamdoctor@aol.com
The ‘Stream Doctor’ is a retired professional stream ecologist and
author, now living in the West and spending way too much time
fly-fishing. You are invited to submit questions relating to
anything stream related directly to him for use in this Q & A Feature
at streamdoctor@aol.com.
Originally published January 26th, 2004 on Fly Anglers Online by Robert Younghanz.