Green Ammunition

[Ferrell Spicer]

With the huge push for "Green" products and practices, the subject of "Green Ammo" has come up and I have no personal experience with it. I am told there is a potential federal mandate of some sort in the works to go to this type of ammo, but again I don't have any details of what that is directed toward.

My job involves developing guaranteed energy savings projects and one we are working on now happens to include a sheriff's indoor shooting range. While discussing ventilation requirements we decided to try to find more information about green ammo and if we could lower the required air changes for the range by limiting them to only the use of green ammo. My concerns of course lean toward the shooting side of things such as accuracy and performance in the weapons and also how it compare to duty ammo. Some information I have found indicates that the cost should be less than 15% more than standard ammunition, but those figures are not detailed as to the type of standard ammunition that was used to compare.

What do any of you more educated people know about this stuff?

[Graham Smith]

I don't know about "green" ammo, per-se, but there are products like WinClean ammo that reduce airborne lead by using lead-free primers and bullets with an enclosed base. There are also lead free bullets (e.g. solid copper), but these are more expensive and still require someone to dig up the ore and process it - which produces a lot more pollution than shooting them does.

No doubt, there will be a bigger emphasis in the military and law enforcement to reduce airborne lead, but what shape that takes is still a guessing game. But I'll bet which ever lobbying firm throws the most money at this will have a lot to do with it.

Edited May 8, 2009 by Graham Smith

[Guy Neill]

The ammunition manufacturers, CCI-Speer, Winchester, Federal, will have information. Fairly extensive studies have been conducted.

I expect you will find the ventilation differences considerable - but the range will not be usable for lead based ammunition if you go that route. Even existing ranges cannot simply change to green ammo and see benefits unless a really rigorous cleaning is undertaken, and then only lead free can be used or everything (everything) is contaminated again.

Guy

[Ferrell Spicer]

Thanks for the reply. I was looking at primarily lead free bullets and lead free primer combination. This is geared mostly towards indoor ranges.