Bullet Maker Shut Down; Lead Tests Advised for Nearby Children

Authorities have closed a bullet-manufacturing business that operated illegally out of a garage in Newhall and recommended that parents have any small children living nearby tested for possible lead poisoning.

Officials with the city of Santa Clarita and Los Angeles County, responding to a neighbor’s complaint, ordered Fred Wooldridge to shut down Hardcast Bullets on Monday. Wooldridge said the company cast as many as 100,000 lead bullets a day, in common pistol calibers from .22 to .45. The projectiles were sold to other companies, which provided gunpowder and cartridge cases and assembled them into finished cartridges.

Health officials have found scraps of lead inside and outside of the garage in the 23000 block of Wildwood Road but have not yet conducted chemical tests to determine the extent of soil contamination, said Paul Papanek, chief of the county Department of Health Services’ toxics epidemiology program.

“We don’t have any evidence that any of that contamination goes beyond the fence line,” Papanek added.

Contacting Parents

But Papanek said health officials are trying to contact parents living within “a few hundred feet” of the garage to recommend that they have their children tested as a precaution because children younger than 7 can be poisoned by concentrations of lead that have no effect on adults. Lead poisoning can retard a child’s mental development, Papanek said.

He said the recommendation is especially aimed at small children who handle or eat dirt, a classic way to contract lead poisoning. But he also said, “People don’t need to get nervous if they are living several blocks away.”

Vyto Adomaitis, a city code-enforcement officer, said the business operated in an area zoned for residential and light agricultural use. “The problem is that this use is incompatible in that area,” he said.

Adomaitis said Wooldridge was complying with the city’s order and had already moved some equipment to an industrial shop in Newhall on Wednesday. “He’s been cooperative,” Adomaitis said. Wooldridge would only be fined if he does not comply with the order.

10 Years

Wooldridge said the business started 10 years ago as a hobby. He said he never encountered zoning problems before Santa Clarita was incorporated in December, 1987. Wooldridge said that when the house was in unincorporated territory, he was told by county officials that his business met zoning and environmental regulations.

He said his materials, lead and tin, were recycled and were not disposed of on the site. He said no explosives were used.

Wooldridge said his two children, ages 15 and 18, were tested for lead poisoning a year ago and registered 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. Papanek said lead levels of between 15 and 25 micrograms per deciliter of blood could produce some problems in children. Physicians become concerned, he said, when the levels exceed 25 micrograms per deciliter.

Papanek said he doubted any contamination exceeded 20 micrograms per deciliter in Newhall.

Wooldridge said Cal-OSHA investigators found high levels of lead in the blood of his three employees last year, including at least one with a level of 53 micrograms per deciliter. But those levels were not hazardous and were reduced by having employees thoroughly scrub their hands after working with lead. The 53-microgram reading had been reduced to 39 by the last time employees were tested in February, he said.

“We brought their blood lead level down dramatically,” he said.

A Wildwood Road resident, who asked not to be identified, said a few neighbors have complained occasionally about fumes coming from the bullet-making business. The workshop was quiet and mostly unobtrusive, but some residents are concerned, she said.

“It’s not a noisy production, but we are talking about lead,” she said.