Lead exposure also can cause hypertension and cognitive dysfunction in adults. They were reluctant, saying the old range wasn't a likely source of problems. When shooters fire guns with lead-based ammunition, they spread lead vapor and dust, insidious toxins. Thousands of people, including workers, shooters and their family members, have been contaminated at shooting ranges due to poor ventilation and contact with lead-coated surfaces, a Seattle Times investigation has found. Even those who’ve never stepped inside a gun range have become sick. Other owners and operators were ignorant of the dangers posed by lead. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has no authority to investigate when soldiers are poisoned by lead. The National Guard in September 2015 again ordered states to inventory their armories with firing ranges. Of the 10 commercial ranges inspected in Washington, nine had at least one lead violation. When caught, gun-range owners face few consequences for failing to protect their workers. Washington state and federal workplace regulators have the power to temporarily close a lead-polluted shooting range to protect workers from exposure to high amounts of lead, but have never done so. But research by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which analyzes occupational hazards for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), shows lead is a hidden danger. The problems in National Guard firing ranges stand out because armories have routinely doubled as community event centers that brought in countless young children. The National Guard's indoor firing ranges were supposed to be well-ventilated, cleaned regularly and equipped with air filters to prevent lead from escaping. “It was just circulating the lead air,” said Maddox, who earned $9 an hour. His head throbbed, his thinking slowed and he couldn’t remember birthdays. Guard guidelines prohibited power-washing because the jet of water could drive lead deeper into the walls and floors. “It just feels like someone unplugged me from the wall and I just lost all my power,” he said. Updating Standards 
 
 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends allowed blood lead levels for all adults be reduced to less than 10 micrograms per deciliter. Maddox’s wife, who worked throughout the business, also developed elevated levels of lead. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and other lawmakers proposed bills in 2013 to require abatement of serious hazards during an appeal, but the bills are languishing in committees. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s current standards, if workers could be exposed to airborne concentrations of lead of at least 30 micrograms per cubic meter of air over an eight-hour workday, employers must monitor lead. Using testing wipes that measure lead on surfaces, the inspector also found lead dust more than 115 times the recommended amounts on a soft-drink machine. Dozens of Roseburg fifth-graders each year spread their sleeping bags on the floor in the same room where inspectors in 2006 found lead dust 650 times above the federal safety threshold. Inspections there in 2006 and 2010 uncovered lead in the building's drill hall. The permissible level of airborne lead for an employee over an 8-hour period is 50 micrograms per cubic meter (mcg/m3). She said Guard officials gave the state "a polluted lemon" when the armory changed hands. Children who’ve never set foot inside a gun range have been poisoned by lead tracked home by parents and others who worked or shot there. Employees whose blood lead level measures at or above 40 micrograms per deciliter must also be monitored as physicians have associated those levels with cognitive and behavioral impacts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also is considering lowering its threshold for childhood blood lead levels, though the agency acknowledges no level of lead is safe for children. “No safe blood-lead level in children has been identified,” according to the CDC. Studies have found that children with even small amounts of lead in their blood permanently lose IQ points and face greater risks of behavioral and attention problems. And effects of lead exposure cannot be corrected.” Lead-based paint in old homes is still the most common way children get overexposed to lead. In California, one of the worst “take home” cases took place about a decade ago, when a worker helping to dismantle a gun range showed high levels of lead in his blood. State health officials tracked the exposure to four more workers who not only had lead poisoning but had also contaminated their homes and families. “The youngest child had the highest” blood-lead level, health officials later reported. They could issue an “order and notice of immediate restraint” that forces a business to close until it fixes its problems. Finally, in October 2007, Champion Arms agreed to the state’s violations and penalties. “There is no evidence that the ventilation system has been fixed.” 
 
 Later that month, inspectors again found rampant violations, including problems uncorrected since the 2006 inspection. Again, a gun-range manager guaranteed in November 2010 that Champion Arms had finally corrected all outstanding violations. Time after time, inspectors found lead hotspots at armories and urged the Guard to do something. The Guard instructed states to inspect every armory for lead and keep the public out of buildings that tested high. Neither the inspector general nor U.S. Army officials could produce a single page of documents when The Oregonian/OregonLive asked to see how the recommendations were addressed. Rely on Occupational Safety & Health ReporterSM for full news coverage and documentation of federal and state workplace safety and health programs, standards, legislation,... 
 
 By Sylvia Carignan 
 
 An upcoming military policy, expected to dictate safer lead exposure levels, will follow a new wave of contamination cleanup efforts being carried out by the National Guard. OSHA then hyped its enforcement in a widely distributed news release. She has pushed a bill that would require government agencies to test new buildings for contamination before allowing workers to occupy them. That building was never meant to be an office building." More than 700 other armories were not inspected since 2012 despite requirements that officials test former ranges annually and active ranges every two years. Contamination turned up years later in places that were purportedly lead-free.  National Guard inaction exposes communities to lead 
 
 PART 1 
 
 In a former Montana National Guard armory where more than 20 workers got sick, lead-laced dust bunnies the size of tangerines clogged the ventilation system. But he thought nothing of test results because they were below 60, the OSHA standard that requires removal from work. “Because of the new information on health risks at these lower-range elevated (blood lead levels), the agency is exploring the possibility of modifying the lead standards in order to reduce the risk of significant health effects for the 1.5 million workers potentially exposed to lead,” said Mandy Kraft, a spokesperson for the Department of Labor. He took costly chelation pills for two years to remove the heavy metal from his system. Lead effects: Several workers were exposed to 12 times the permissible level of lead in the air. National Guard guidelines called for every armory with a former firing range to be inspected annually. Lead effects: Range workers and the public repeatedly have been overexposed to unsafe lead levels over the years. They didn’t feel sick and no one had died, they told Godlove. The Guard had to warn states not to keep infant formula and children's toys in areas possibly contaminated by lead. One inspector, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said he knew lead was being tracked throughout the buildings but was powerless to do anything except sound repeated alarms. She became irritable and nervous – "keyed up," she said – a condition that worsened the longer she spent in the building.
– Visiting a shooting range is not without risk, and we aren't talking about deadly accidents. Lead dust discharged by firearms is the leading cause of lead poisoning outside the workplace, the Seattle Times reported in a lengthy 2014 investigation. Each time a gun filled with lead-based ammunition is fired, a cloud of lead particles trails in the bullet's wake. The dust hangs in the air and collects on clothing, creating a hazard to anyone who comes in contact with it. The Times' conclusion: "Thousands of ... workers, shooters, and their family members have been contaminated at shooting ranges due to poor ventilation and contact with lead-coated surfaces." A 2016 Oregonian investigation backs that up, noting the ventilation system at a former National Guard Armory in Montana was clogged with "lead-laced bunnies the size of tangerines"; 20 workers fell ill. NPR takes a look at one move that has since been made: The Department of Defense in April tightened its limit for acceptable levels of lead in blood to 20 micrograms per deciliter. Bloomberg earlier this year cited a DoD rep who said roughly 1,200 DOD employees have their blood monitored for lead due to workplace exposure. The CDC adds these stats: 1.2 million law enforcement officials risk exposure as part of their weapons-training requirements; as many as 60,000 Americans work in shooting ranges, and 34 million Americans target shoot. But firearms advocates say fears of lead poisoning are "unsupported by evidence." A rep for the National Shooting Sports Foundation tells NPR he sees an effort afoot to "diminish people's participation in shooting sports or exercise their second amendment rights."