Posted on 03/30/2014 7:42:36 AM PDT by Hoodat
Environmental Protection Agency and FBI agents raided the ammunition company USA Brass over alleged “environmental violations” early Thursday morning.
NBC Montana was tipped off by witnesses that federal investigators were there until at least 4 a.m. on Thursday. Federal agents could be seen going through the company’s building and taking items to a truck parked outside. EPA lead criminal investigator Bert Marsden said that the agency was looking into alleged “environmental violations” by USA Brass.
“We are investigating alleged violations of environmental law,” Marsden said on Thursday. “An investigation takes as long as it takes, and I can’t provide any details as it relates to that.”
“I can make a statement that there is no immediate threat to the public or the community at this time,” said Marsden.
It’s unclear exactly what the environmental violations were, but USA Brass has come under fire from federal agencies before for lead exposure. USA Brass cleans and resells used ammunition casings, and NBC Montana reports that local health officials found elevated levels of lead in the blood of 22 current and former employees.
Last September, the company was fined more than $45,000 by the U.S. Labor Department for 10 serious violations. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) also found that USA Brass has overexposed workers to lead and failed to “provide basic safeguards to reduce lead exposure, including breathing protection and protective clothing,” reports NBC Montana. . .
I won’t vote GOPE. Just for conservatives
Not true at all. High resolution mass spec can easily do so. Different batches of lead have significant differences in isotope ratios, depending on the parent radioisotope that the lead is derived from, which ultimately goes back to what the geochemistry of the lead mass source. Likewise, recycled materials can have similar (but more subtle) differences.
If there is no immediate threat, then there is no need for a raid. Unless, that is to say, one seeks to implement a gestapo-like totalitarian police state, which seeks to diminish the right to keep and bear arms “by other means” as someone once said.
One can`t tell the present location of the physical object from childhood when a guy is 30 years old or more coz by then the crib is probably gone. Even babies gnaw on windowsill ledges that had lead paint in them, and their tricycles and toys also had lead in them-
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TRACE ALL THAT LEAD BACK TO CHILDHOOOD TOYS AFTER ADULTHOOD_
PROVE YOUR CASE- Where`s the evidence that someone has actually traced lead poisoning in an adult back 30 years to a childhood object contaminated with lead paint-
I am waiting.
BTW I STILL GOT MY CRIB FULLA LEAD PAINT N I`m pushing 80 hahaha perfect health too
what a buncha crap
Look at this non-sequitur from a UCLA “STUDY”
WELL DUHHH
“Over 40% of homes built between 1940-1959 and over 65% of
homes in the United States built prior to 1940 still contain hazards due to leaded paint. The lead from the paint gets incorporated into household dust and is both inhaled and ingested by small children, who are prone to putting play items in their mouths as they explore their surroundings.”
In addition, studies suggest individuals who suffer from chronic lead poisoning during early childhood are more likely to behave violently
and engage in criminal behavior later in life.
http://www.environment.ucla.edu/reportcard/article3772.html
This means that 50% of all the people born in the USA since 1940 and earlier are actually criminals and they just can`t help it.
What a bunch of crock!!
Basically, it would involve cutting a disc out of the bone, and then sampling it layer by layer in an EXTREMELY sensitive mass spectrometer, by ablating one layer at a time...probably with a pulsed, focussed laser.
Has anyone actually "done" the above??? Probably not (see "expensive"), but the analysis capability is available (Note...I'm an analytical chemist....so certainly knowledgable about what today's technology is capable of).
But there are plenty of lead sources that are contemporaneous (i.e. as in the posted article)to exposure. So the lead used in the plant processes most certainly CAN be connected to an exposed person or persons.
I still think that lead doesn`t stay in the body coz my mother would take me shopping with her when I wuz a kid and when I stopped to look a a toy or candy, she would say, “Hurry Up! Get the Lead Out!” Mother wuz always right.
Maybe it's more like the SS taking out the leadership of the SA?
But USA Brass doesn't deal in bullets, they deal in fired brass.
Sure there is probably some lead traces, although not much since most bullets are jacketed and the lead doesn't touch the brass of the cartridge case (the brass) There is also lead in the primers, but again, not much in fired primer.
The employees are more likely to have gotten a little extra lead exposure at the local gun ranges. Or from any number of other sources.
Actually the 1775 solution. April 19th to be exact.
My ancestor then Sergeant Samuel Hill, of Harvard MA, took part in those festivities. He is listd as responding to the Lextington alarm. Paul Revere and all that. Earlier he had been a member of Harvard's Committee of Correspondence, sort of like the FR of those pre-internet days. His future son in law, Ephraim Chaffin, also my ancestor later joined by then Captain Hill at the 1st battle of Saratoga.
Well sadly it may be deja vu all over again for your family soon.
But they aren't an ammo manufacturing plant. They are, in effect, a recycling company. They don't make ammunition, they don't deal with explosives. They clean up old brass, which they probably buy mostly from the military. The administration tried to shut down sales of fired military brass to such recyclers, a few years ago, but that sort of blew up in their faces. They wanted the stuff melted down.
Sort of like Lord North and King George's stooge General Gage did.
Well George, and his son George, were not long after no longer King, at least in the 13 former colonies.
BO isn't King either, no matter how much he wishes his phone and his pen made him one. If he tries to stay in office one second past noon on January 20, 2017, he'll soon learn that, the hard way. If he hasn't learned it sooner.
How do you know the lead in the employees came from the plant. Did they test other people living in the same area?
The story doesn't indicate what processes that are used to de-prime and clean used cartridges would result in such lead exposure.
The story does say An OSHA inspection in March actually found that the company complied with federal requirements for several months, apparently learning from its mistake last year. It sounds more like the company was not doing things the OSHA way, but now are.
Brass is an alloy of copper(mostly) and zinc. No lead in it. Primers have lead, and the fired primers could be the source of the lead, but most of the lead from the primer goes out the end of the cartridge case, right behing the bullet, when the cartridge is fired.
A chilling effect upon the entire industry...
The cat? “Maybe it’s more like the SS taking out the leadership of the SA?”
No, because the SS represented Hitler. It looks like the FBI is representing We The People.
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