Flint, Michigan, lies about 70 miles from the shores of the largest group of fresh water bodies in the world: the Great Lakes. Yet its residents can’t get clean water from their taps.
If you’re like me, you woke up one day to find Flint in a state of emergency and have no idea why. Well here’s an easy to follow Q&A explaining the problem.
How did the water problem start?
Almost two years ago, the state decided to save money by switching Flint’s water supply from Lake Huron (which they were paying the city of Detroit for), to the Flint River, known to locals for its filth. It was supposed to be temporary while a new state-run supply line to Lake Huron was created. The project was estimated to take about two years.
What happened when the water supply was switched?
Soon after the switch, the water started to take on a brown look, smell and taste funny.
What exactly is wrong with the water?
The water contained iron. Also, about half of the service lines to homes in Flint are made of lead and because the water wasn’t properly treated, lead began leaching into the water supply, in addition to the iron.
For two years, city and state officials told worried residents that everything was fine. But in August, a group of skeptical researchers from Virginia Tech came up and did in-home testing and found elevated levels of lead in the drinking water and made those findings public. Adding more salt to the wound, a 2011 study existed on the Flint River found it would have to be treated with an anti-corrosive agent for it to be considered as a safe source for drinking water.
Adding that anti-corrosive agent would have cost about $100 a day, and experts say 90% of the problems with Flint’s water would have been avoided.Unfortunately, the results fell on deaf ears.
So how did the results ultimately gain attention?
Randomly, a local doctor took things into her own hands. In the pediatric ward of Flint’s Hurley Medical Center, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha started to notice more and more worried parents fretting over rashes and hair loss. Dr. Mona, realized there was a way to determine whether the water was affecting kids. Medicare requires states to keep records of blood lead levels in toddlers. Her comparisons year-over-year in some children was astonishing. Lead levels doubled and even tripled in some cases.
At first, the state publicly denounced her work, saying she was causing near hysteria. However, after a few weeks of attempting to denounce her work, the city reverted to using Detroit’s Lake Huron water supply, but the damage was done to the lead pipes.
What are the medical consequences of drinking lead contaminated water?
Lead poisoning is irreversible. Pediatricians such as Hanna-Attisha fear the Flint children who tested with elevated levels will suffer lifelong consequences.
“If you were to put something in a population to keep them down for generation and generations to come, it would be lead,” Hanna-Attisha said. “It’s a well-known, potent neurotoxin. There’s tons of evidence on what lead does to a child, and it is one of the most damning things that you can do to a population. It drops your IQ, it affects your behavior, it’s been linked to criminality, it has multigenerational impacts. There is no safe level of lead in a child.”
Why did Flint attempt to take such a cheap way of obtaining water to begin with?
In 2011, Flint was declared to be in a financial state of emergency, and the state took budgetary control.
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