CT General Assembly January 2017 proposition to BAN the USE, mfc and sale of fishing tackle containing LEAD!

Thanks to PaulD and onthewater102 for mentioning this yesterday.

CT General Assembly January 2017 proposition to BAN the USE, mfc and sale of fishing tackle containing lead!!!!!

What can you tell us about this DEEP? Thank You (and "Thanks Again CT")

Is this proposition for ALL Lead tackle, or "just" split shot and items under 1/4oz that diving birds/loons can ingest? Will birds really dive, pick off the bottom, swim to the surface, and ingest my jigs and bank sinkers???!!!

No wonder the CT General Assembly can't get REAL work done with nonsense propositions like this they fill their days with!

CT General Assembly Lead Ban

Yeah you have to protect birds from diving down 100' to ingest my 16 oz bank sinkers

I hate it when that happens! ....if I had a $1 for every time those diving birds did that!

Are diving birds the ones taking the lead batteries out of the vehicles in New Haven???

Massachusetts bans the use of lead weights under one ounce, does not include lures that use lead solder in manufacture per discussion I had with Mass DEP. However the proposed CT law would outlaw use of all my lead molds. And would I need to get rid of my lead weighted chum pot? We need ongoing proactive monitoring on this.....

As written CT is proposing the BAN of ALL LEAD fishing tackle.

Ready Fire Aim.

Doubt it will pass in this form.

Where do you get the <1/4oz size being the approximate limit to what diving birds will ingest? If it's from a study you might want to share the report with your local representative.

I doubt anyone on this forum would voluntarily eat one of our own lead sinkers, so if this is a real issue with diving birds experiencing statistically significant higher rates of mortality or lower annual recruitment as a result of ingesting lead fishing weights then I will happily switch to a non-toxic material - but a cross board ban is just the typical hysterics influenced legislation that this state puts out.

I don't see how a bird is going to die from lead exposure after eating the 1/4oz worth of lead at the end of my 4/0 steel fishing hook that got snagged on the bottom without the hook doing it in long before the lead does. A little 3/16 oz split shot on the other hand? Yes.

I just through 1/4oz out there.....and heard of other states like MA per cat_in_the_hat with a no lead under 1oz limit.

Even if a diving bird eats a split shot, it just craps it out and any of the minimal amount of lead that gets into its blood stream quickly gets diluted and washed out of its system.

This is the same reasoning they banned lead shot while waterfowl hunting. The only lead that kills birds is from lead shot fired from a shotgun....which has already been banned.

The chances of a diving bird diving near lead is SLIM, diving down exactly to the lead VERY SLIM, then eating that lead SUPER SLIM. It just doesn't happen, and a proposal against something that doesn't happen. It's an anti-fisherman law...anti-tackle mfc law......pro friend-family member law who has a tungsten business. This proposal does not, and will not effect positively or negatively diving bird lead poisoning issues.

#Nonsense

I'd like to see a loon or other waterfowl eat one of my 10 lb. downrigger balls.

Such a hard thing - studies result in statistics - statistics can be manipulated, misrepresented or simply falsified all to make a point, but at the same time objective science is all you have to credibly base a decision.

Personally I find it hard to believe that lead fishing weights that have been used for over a hundred years are suddenly impacting birds adversely, but I'm open to being shown otherwise. In the meantime I've sent my letters to the local reps in Hartford & suggest everyone else do the same.

"Statistics are like a bikini, what they show is revealing, but what they hide is crucial."

I used that in one of my Biology Statistics lab reports in college. My T.A. also found it amusing and graded me accordingly.

You can definitely spin stats however you want the story told.

I too am a man of science, I'm open to hearing the science, but just doesn't make sense to me at this point.

https://www.cga.ct.gov/asp/menu/cgafindleg.asp

For anyone interested in saying something but not sure where to start - that's the link to the state's website to ID who your representative is and how to contact them.

Just to keep it real Don, the mechanism for lead shot is the same as sinkers. Birds INGEST the shot, it is ground in the gizzard, and the finely ground lead slurry is now absorbed. Looks like your avian digestion physiology is as good as your duck identification skills .

#nonsense only if you don't understand what you are talking about.

Still haven't seen a bird that can ingest a 4/0 bass jig and live to be poisoned by the lead before the hook kills him, or TroutTracker's 10lb downrigger.


I'm not contesting the physiology of HOW a bird could ingest, absorb & ultimately be poisoned by lead - I just want to see the science to show that it's actually occurring on a large enough scale to be an issue.

There is plenty of science backing up the toxicity pathway to loons on inland lakes gobbling up tiny split shots. My daughter worked on this all last summer.

As far as I know. there is no science that shows a toxicity pathway in the marine environment.

I believe we have seen this bill before in the CT Legislature.

I'm very doubtful it has any legs. . . . . . however. People should contact their legislator. It NEVER hurts.

The Tufts Veterinary School has a decent Web Page on the issue with the Loons.

A lead toxicity pathway for loons in lake environments does exist. There is no pathway in marine environments.

There are dozens of factors that break the pathway

Hot Link - Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine. Web Page on Loons.

Here we see facts misrepresented, likely to drive hyperbole:

Granted, even a 25% toxicosis rate is sufficient to warrant action - why blow the issue out of proportion by including "suspected" cases with verified cases in the final reporting?



Same report gives us a more practical solution - limit the use of lead in terminal tackle less than an inch wide in any dimension. Done. Easy. Landing us at a point that is a far cry from 100% lead ban - but an appropriate measure to address the real problem.

I have inhaled lead fumes since I was probably 7 years old pouring sinkers with my Dad, and since about 3 years old biting split shot as I fished and handling lead bank sinkers. I think we can ALL AGREE there are no ascertainable negative side effects of inhaling and ingesting lead in my case. #CaseClosed!

I wonder how many of those "Unknown" deaths in their study were due to Busch beer/pharma contaminated water...

Nawwww....you'll live forever like Mick Jagger on all dat stuff.

Interesting look into the mind of researchers with an agenda.

As onthewater102 pointed out, they have combined "suspected" with actual lead tackle deaths, and throw that figure around as the total for actual lead deaths. If the study were a study and not an attempt to sell an agenda, the "suspected" numbers would be added to the unknown, not those that are provably fishing tackle lead related.

Even the layout of the chart is misleading. Charts quoting percentage should show the scale on a 100% basis. but it doesn't look as dramatic when you only fill a small portion of the scale, so they left off the empty side.

To be honest the thing that stood out to me as the oddest, is why do loons in a fresh water environment attack each other (intraspecfic trauma) but none in a saltwater environment do.

In looking at previous work by the group at Tufts (Northeastern Naturalist 16(2):177-182. 2009 ), they scored "suspected lead toxicosis" as: 1) sick/dead loons found with lead in their digestive tract (but not analyzed for lead in the liver to confirm poisoning), 2) sick/dead loons with lead in their digestive tract and showing clinical signs of lead poisoning (but not analyzed for lead in the liver) and 3) sick/dead loons with lead in their digestive tract that had liver lead levels in the 2-6 ppm range (6 ppm is considered toxicosis). For me the conclusion that the total amount confirmed and suspected was presented is acceptable practice because they presented the data individually so that you can see what was absolutely confirmed and what was highly suspected based on a number of characters. Another way to say it is that they show the data individually based on confirmed and suspected but put their best estimate of accurate poisoning out there as 44%.

Either way, as has been said 25% (or 44%) of loon mortality is a lot of loons with toxic levels of lead in them. I am always surprised that this is so common.

As for the question why loons in freshwater have higher intraspecific mortality... It is because loons breed on freshwater lakes and not saltwater. The combative territorial interactions that injure them occur where they breed and claim territory, not where they winter on the ocean.

I think a lot of the disparity in the study between fresh & salt water populations is due to such a large portion of the salt water remains being decomposed or degraded beyond a point where cause of death could be determined.

That said, the freshwater results clearly indicate that lead contamination is an issue. If we REASONABLY curtail the use of lead in favor of less toxic/non toxic options I don't think we will see any improvement in the lead related mortality for quite some time due to the existing material already in the water, but we should be able to avoid any increased mortality due to lead and over time allow the causes of mortality to shift back to more natural ones.

A total lead ban is far from reasonable.