What is Lead?
Lead: The Toxic Mineral
Lead is a soft, dense metal that is gray in colour. It is also highly toxic. Even small amounts of exposure - through dust, paint chips, or water - can cause neurological damage, seizures, kidney problems, reproductive harm, and death, especially in children and animals. Because lead doesn’t easily leave the body, toxicity can accumulate over time and cause chronic health problems, even from small but consistent contact.
Banning and Regulating Lead
For some time, lead was a popular material in things like water pipes and paint because it’s easy to shape and doesn’t rust easily. But as the world began to better understand how dangerous lead is, Canada and many other countries banned and regulated lead use in pencils, paint, gasoline, children's toys, plumbing, cosmetics jewelry and other household items.
Lead Fishing Tackle: Toxins in your Tackle Box
Although lead has been banned in most items, there is no Canada-wide ban on lead fishing tackle yet. Manufacturers still use lead to make sinkers, jigs, weights, and other fishing tackle. This is despite the fact that non-toxic alternatives such as tin, steel, and tungsten are becoming more affordable for manufacturers and anglers alike.
Lead fishing tackle has been banned in the UK, Denmark, and several US States and US national parks. Canada's national and provincial parks have also banned the use of lead.
The Impact of Lead on Wildlife
Lead: The Invisible Killer
Our wildlife are at increasing risk of consuming lead tackle and spreading lead poisoning up the food chain.
Birds like loons, ducks, and swans don’t have teeth, so they swallow small stones or grit to help grind up food in their gizzards. These waterfowl frequently mistake lead sinkers for pebbles and swallow them, resulting in them consuming large amounts of toxic lead.
Fish and amphibians of all sizes also often ingest lead or get hooked or tangled with lead jigs or sinkers. Animals like loons, eagles, herons and turtles then eat these creatures whole - including the lead inside or attached to them.
Small But Deadly
Once inside an animal's stomach, lead dissolves into the bloodstream.
Even a single small piece (as little as 1 gram) causes weakness, disorientation, tremors, inability to fly, dive, or eat, and death, often within days or weeks. Poisoned animals become easy targets for prey, and are unable to care for themselves or their young.
It only takes one piece of lead the size of a grain of rice to kill an adult eagle or loon.
The Impact in Numbers
In the United States, samples taken from across the country revealed that 47% of bald eagles and 46% of golden eagles had signs of chronic lead poisoning.
Multiple studies in Ontario and across North America have identified lead poising from ingested fishing tackle as the leading cause of death in loons and 78 other species, including bald eagles, great blue herons, swans, ospreys, mallards and mergansers.
Lead Fishing Tackle is the #1 Killer of Loons
A New Hampshire study found that 49% of adult loon moralities were caused by poising from lead fishing tackle.
Is it Grit or Lead?
Here is an actual sample of a lakebed from Wolfe Lake, Ontario. Lead tackle was added to illustrate how difficult it is to identify grit from lead.
Loons can't tell the difference between lead tackle and pebbles. Can you? How many pieces of lead fishing tackle are in the picture?
The Other Impacts of Lead
Pollutes our Food and Water
Lost or discarded lead tackle accumulates in lakes and rivers, especially in popular fishing spots. This lead breaks down over time and leaches into water or sediments, where it is absorbed by insects, fish, and plants. The toxins then moves up the food chain to birds and humans who consume or come into contact with the contaminated water or animals (such as bass and pike!)
Toxic to Humans
Although humans don’t usually ingest tackle directly, handling lead tackle regularly can expose anglers to small amounts through skin contact or contaminated hands. As well, lead-contaminated fish or water can pose indirect risks of lead poisoning, especially to children and pregnant women who swim or accidentally ingest water.