Having read only part of the posts on this subject, some of what I say has probably already been mentioned.
I spent some of my younger life, like the 2nd threw 4th grade in the Kellogg, ID area, at that time the lead and silver capital of the world. The river there ran gray, picture a gray crayon flowing by your class room window, 24/7. I returned there in 1995 to see what the clean-up was doing, the rivers and streams leading from the smelters and mines are now pristine looking, they would not support aquatic life at that time, but I understand they will now. At about age 24 I got a job at a lead smelter on Harbour Island in Seattle. Before going to work for these folks I had to test for lead exposure, it was elevated. After working for this company about a year, I got really ill, I won't try to explain all of what went on, but, the key thing was my temper became very short and I was very violent. According to my doctor, this is a sign of advanced lead poisoning. I spent 7 days in the hospital having my blood cleaned, at the end of the hospital stay my blood lead level was less than when I went to work for the company smelting lead. That was nearly 40 years ago. Now every physical has a blood/lead count, it is still higher than average, but I feel good and have no evident problems.
I still cast my hand gun bullets and shoot them on a regular basis. I only shoot out doors and then make sure that the breeze is not blowing in my face. I do not shoot plain base bullets, except in my 45-70, gas checks are the order of the day, always. recently I purchased a Sharps reproduction which I shoot black powder substitutes in, I did a considerably amount of investigation into this before I started shooting those big plain base bullets that are required for this caliber, and found that the use of a wad under the bullet and over the powder is required to get good accuracy, it helps or prevents the hot powder charge from from burning the lead from the base of the bullet. As a test I fired some rounds without the wad, I was really amazed at the amount of lead loss from these bullets, the high was 3 grains, all from one side of the bullet base. Before somebody asks, they were fired into wet news print, the deformation of the bullet was very minimal, and the total loss for the 5 rounds fired was 12.2 grains of lead.
Anyway, to continue on, I started experimenting with wads and plain base bullets in one of my .44's. The loss of lead on the plain base without a wad is substantial but doesn't seem to be extreme, (if you can call a .5 to 1 grain loss insignificant, that is per bullet), however, if I spend some extra time and a little more effort and cut some wads from old milk jugs and put them over the powder before seating the bullet, the lead loss is none existent. This is worth a try, it doesn't eliminate the lead exposure from the lead bullets, but it does cut it down considerably.
I hope this helps some of you, give it a try or shoot gas checks only, but always shoot out doors with lead bullets, and make sure the breeze is not blowing in your face. If you have to shoot indoors, by all means shoot only bullets which have a total copper jacket.
Your health is important, if you don't protect it you won't be able to do what all of us here like to do. SHOOTING!
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