Alec Baldwin’s dad was a high school shooting coach who died after spending 28 years breathing in the lead dust from students’ bullets.
Alexander Rae Baldwin II died at 55 from lung cancer, which the actor believes was from working in the unventilated range.
Baldwin, 63, a dad of seven, is still waiting to learn if he will face criminal or civil action over the gun death on set of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42.
He accidentally shot mum-of-one Halyna with a prop gun while filming the western Rust in New Mexico 10 days ago.
Baldwin told in his autobiography how an oncologist had quizzed him following his dad’s death in 1983.
Asked if his father had worked in heavy industry or near a steel mill due to “very high lead content” in his blood, Baldwin said: “I told the doctor my father coached riflery in a high school for 28 years, and he ventured that an unventilated shooting range may have been a cause.
“For over a quarter century, lead dust was inhaled not just by my dad, but by his team members and my brothers and me as well.”
He said other schools ventilated their ranges “long before”.
Baldwin, who was 25 when his dad died, added in his 2017 memoir Nevertheless that seeing his dad slip away was one of hia life’s most agonising moments.
But he claims when the family asked the New York school for brickwork samples to prove the theory, they “gutted the rifle range, incinerating all of the material” to avoid a lawsuit.
The actor has been comforting Halyna’s attorney husband Matthew and their son Andros, nine.
