Employee of Firing Range Stricken by Lead Poisoning : Health: A Van Nuys worker’s illness illustrates a growing realization among regulators that target shooting can pose a serious risk.

Brian Stulberg first realized something was haywire when he tried to carry his mother’s groceries last June and the plastic bags kept slipping out of his hands.

The wiry 27-year-old chalked it up to stress and exhaustion from working long hours teaching novices to shoot at a Van Nuys firing range. Business at The Target Range had ballooned in the wake of last spring’s riots, and Stulberg’s workdays sometimes stretched from 7:30 a.m. to 11:45 p.m., six days a week.

“By July, my family started noticing that I was becoming belligerent. . . . I was forgetting things all the time,” Stulberg said. “I knew something was really wrong.”

Months later, blood tests proved what Stulberg had by then begun to suspect: He was lead-poisoned, apparently because of contact with the heavy metal at the range. In fact, his blood test results were in the danger zone, where such side effects as dramatic personality changes, memory loss and neuromuscular impairment--including a weakness known as drop wrist--are common.

Stulberg’s discovery and similar test results from four other employees and from a patron of The Target Range provided further evidence of a problem regulators say they began to recognize in recent years: Although employees of battery factories and foundries are commonly known to be at risk for lead poisoning, target range employees also are vulnerable.

“In general, when we think about lead, we always think about the major industries that are users of lead,” said Joyce Simonowitz, nursing consultant for Cal/OSHA’s Southern California Medical Unit. “But we have found and we continue to find shooting ranges that are major contributors.”

Los Angeles County and Cal/OSHA investigated The Target Range and the state went on to issue two serious citations and fine the company more than $4,000--moves that took company President Paul Cole by surprise. Cole runs the range, which is attached to one of the five Gun World stores in Los Angeles County.

“I guess you could call it our ignorance,” Cole said. “Our intent is not to make anybody sick.”

Even some health officials were surprised by a 1991 state health department study that found employees of sport shooting and law enforcement ranges combined are the fourth likeliest group to have lead poisoning. Although far rarer, patrons also may be victims--especially in indoor ranges with poor ventilation, as was the case at The Target Range, said county epidemiology analyst Kathy Gilbert.

“The people who are at greatest risk are the people who spend a lot of time at ranges--the instructors and those who are there constantly, practicing to be professional marksmen or whatever,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan, chairman of the Department of Community Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

The potential dangers at target ranges emanate from the act of shooting itself, which creates friction that shaves a fine lead-laced dust from both the ammunition and the gun barrel. In addition, many shooting instructors and range masters double on cleanup duty, helping to sweep the dust and gather spent shells and cartridges for recycling.

In the past few years, lead contamination has been uncovered at numerous other ranges around the state, according to Cal/OSHA spokesman Rick Rice. Among them were the Firing Line in Northridge, cited and fined more than $2,200 by Cal/OSHA in 1991 after four employees were found to have elevated blood-lead levels. A year ago, five workers at the Agoura Indoor Shooting Range tested high, Rice said, leading to 15 citations and more than $1,600 in fines.

Lead poisoning has struck some unlikely targets.

A teen-ager hired to clean a San Gabriel Valley range after school discovered during a routine physical that he had an alarmingly high blood-lead level, the county reported. In another, two San Diego County toddlers were seriously poisoned in 1988 after they regularly accompanied their father to salvage spent ammunition from an outdoor range, according to state health department officials.

If managed correctly, however, shooting ranges can be perfectly safe, lead experts maintain. Government health and safety inspectors often require such measures as respirators, improved ventilation systems with sophisticated air filters and, for cleanup crews, respirators, powerful vacuums and bodysuits. They also require regular blood testing of employees.

There is a hitch, though. None of those measures are required by law until after elevated levels of lead have been detected in the air or in employees’ blood, and none are specifically aimed at protecting customers.

Still, Los Angeles County health officials have been actively inspecting ranges for more than a year, and they said most had instituted at least some safety measures on their own or did so soon after the county inspection. They conceded, however, that so far they have been able to visit only about half of the two dozen or so public ranges in the area.

The Santa Anita Firing Range in Arcadia is held up by the county as an example for other ranges to follow. Range Manager Adel Simmons said that in addition to a significant investment in cleaning equipment and protective gear, the range emphasizes workers’ personal hygiene and sells only copper-clad ammunition, which creates less lead dust.

County health workers said that, by contrast, at The Target Range they met resistance to their recommendations--which included testing all employees, buying protective gear and improving the ventilation system.

“Once the range found out they had a problem, that’s when they started to get nervous,” said analyst Gilbert, who works with the county’s Co-Occupational Lead Program. “They said I was asking them to do too much.”

The county then turned to the state, and after a nine-week investigation, Cal/OSHA issued its two citations against the company Jan. 7 for failing to monitor lead exposure in the workplace and for allowing the lead to be swept instead of vacuumed, which the citation reports said had “played a big part in having four out of nine employees” with elevated blood-lead levels.

On Feb. 5, seven lesser citations were issued involving general worker safety and education practices, including lack of instruction in proper respirator use.

The major problems were rectified soon after the citations were issued, according to the reports, but the case remains open, largely because the company is appealing the more than $4,000 in fines assessed.

Cole denied that he or other range managers had dragged their feet with the regulators. He said that for two years they had required cleanup suits, for a year they had been voluntarily testing workers for lead every three months and that, after the county’s inspection, they spent an additional $55,000 on equipment and improvements.

“We were cooperating 100%,” Cole said. “We ordered a special vacuum cleaner right away, and by the time Cal/OSHA came in, it had arrived.”

Stulberg countered that employees were only provided protective suits after the county’s inspection. They were given masks, he said, but they were not rated for lead.

According to Cole, his supplier had assured him the masks would filter out lead.

“We didn’t know who else to ask,” he said. “Now we know.”

As is true with most instances of lead poisoning, the county first learned about The Target Range through a private laboratory. Under a 1987 state law, all labs are required to report test results exceeding 25 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood.

When the state health department compiled all such blood test reports received before 1991, it found exposure levels at shooting ranges were lower than at the more dangerous battery manufacturers and smelting operations, but that they still often exceeded the warning point for adults of 40 micrograms per deciliter of blood.

The higher the lead level in blood, the more likely are complications such as kidney and liver damage. However, health officials said vulnerability to lead poisoning varies from individual to individual.

Neither the county nor Cal/OSHA would release specific blood-lead levels of The Target Range customer nor of the nine employees, citing the confidentiality of medical records. The Cal/OSHA citation report states generally that four of nine employees tested exceeded 40 micrograms per deciliter.

Stulberg’s blood test results, provided by his private physician, showed his levels ranged from 76 to 99 micrograms per deciliter in September and October.

“I was taken aback because I was given assurance by the range management that the place was safe,” Stulberg said.

Levels of 80 and above frequently require hospitalization, but Stulberg never had to be hospitalized. Instead, his treatment was to just sit and wait for the lead to leave his system and hope for no lasting side effects. Experts said evacuating lead from blood and tissues usually takes about as long as it took to get poisoned in the first place.

Cole said he believed Stulberg’s levels might have been higher than other employees’ because he participates in off-hours combat shooting which involves “rolling around in lead.” Stulberg said he did occasionally show students how to shoot from a prone position, but “I had no idea I was lying in lead.”

By federal law, 40 micrograms per deciliter is the action level in a work setting, triggering regular testing of employees and other protective measures. The law states that any worker with levels over 60 micrograms per deciliter must immediately be removed from the source of exposure--even placed on paid leave if necessary--until his or her level drops to below 40.

At The Target Range, Cole said two or three employees had levels high enough that they were moved from the range to jobs at the firm’s gun stores. In Stulberg’s case, however, by the time the results came back he had already been fired from The Target Range, after an argument with another employee.

After months of feeling lethargic, a common symptom of lead-triggered anemia, Stulberg is waiting for recent blood test results that he hopes will find him cured. He spends his days job hunting and preparing a workers’ compensation claim against the range with the help of an attorney. He is trying to get the company to pay for his lost wages and more than $1,300 in medical bills.

“What I miss most is teaching people--that personal contact,” he said. “I was basically paid to do my hobby. . . . Now I cannot do that anymore. I have to look for another profession.”

Elevated Blood-Lead Levels in Adults in California, 1987-90

% of total Number of reports made Industry people* to state Lead batteries 1,089 39% Secondary lead smelting 473 17% Foundries 302 11% Firing ranges (sport and police) 129 7% Radiator repair 124 4% Pottery 73 3% Aircraft manufacturing 65 2%

Source: California Occupational Health Program, 1991 * Includes those exceeding state permissible level of 25 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood.