Lead mining in and of itself isn't all that deadly. It's found in ores containing copper, as well as silver and zinc. It's just big rocks. But it's the smelting using roasting and then coke-fired blast furnaces that is the problem. Doe Run is developing a wet electrochemical process that replaces blast furnace processes, and is already using the process in one of its Peru facilities.
Australia, China and the United States account for more than half of primary production of lead, and the Lead Belt of Southeast Missouri produces 70% of all the US primary supply of lead, and more than 50% of the zinc. Doe Run's recycling smelter in Boss, MO, which is the largest secondary smelter in the world, produces more than 150,000 metric tones of lead annually, most of it from used lead acid batteries. More than half the world's production of lead comes from recycled batteries and other sources.
You absolutely, positively do not need a primary smelter to produce lead bullets. Since the end of WWII, very few bullets, if any, have been made from the lead of primary smelters. The lead from primary smelters contains significant contaminants of arsenic, antimony, bismuth, zinc, copper, silver, and gold. Contaminated lead makes for incredibly bad ammunition. In order to get the lead to a state of purity that allows for accurate ammunition that won't just disintegrate upon leaving the barrel of a gun, if must be further processed using the Parkes Process, then the Betterton-Kroll Process, and then the Betts Process. Or, you could just skip all that and use lead produced safer, quicker and significantly cheaper from a secondary smelter using recycled lead.
Even with the closing of the primary smelter, Doe Run still operates four active mills in Missouri, where primary lead is produced from the three dozen mines they operate in Missouri. So just because there is no longer a primary smelter, it doesn't mean primary lead is no longer produced.
