Michigan Ignored 'Conclusive Evidence' Of Flint Lead Poisoning, Researcher Says
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Michigan Ignored 'Conclusive Evidence' Of Flint Lead Poisoning, Researcher Says
Michigan state officials insisted that the water supply in Flint was safe even though they knew an unusual number of children had suffered lead poisoning, according to a scientist who helped blow the whistle on Flint's water crisis.
Through a public records request, Marc Edwards, a civil engineering professor at Virginia Tech, uncovered a July 2015 memo warning of elevated lead levels in Flint kids' blood.
An internal report from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services warned that lead poisoning rates "were higher than usual for children under age 16 living in the City of Flint during the months of July, August and September, 2014."
In April 2014, city and state officials switched Flint's water source from Detroit's water system to the Flint River, immediately prompting citizen complaints about tap water quality.
Edwards led a team that conducted its own analysis of Flint's water, reporting high lead levels in early September of this year. Brad Wurfel, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, essentially dismissed the allegations in an interview with Michigan Radio, saying the state's analysis of blood data didn't show any signs of a problem.
The government continued to insist that the water was safe until a Flint pediatrician with the Hurley Medical Center reported later in September that the water change corresponded with a significant spike in lead poisoning among city children.
However, the memo obtained by Edwards suggests the state knew about the lead poisoning weeks earlier, yet continued to say the water was okay.
"They discovered scientifically conclusive evidence of an anomalous increase in childhood lead poisoning," Edwards wrote Monday on the website he created to track Flint's water crisis, "but stood by silently as MDEQ officials repeatedly and falsely stated that no spike in blood lead levels (BLL) of children had occurred."
Reached for comment on Monday about the memo, Michigan's DHHS said it had made an honest mistake by attributing the spike in blood lead levels to seasonal variation.
"When initially looking at the citywide and county elevated blood lead level numbers, the increase appeared to be consistent with the routine seasonal fluctuation seen in the summer months," agency spokeswoman Jennifer Eisner said in an email. "It wasn’t until the Hurley report came out that our epidemiologists took a more in-depth look at the data by zip code, controlling for seasonal variation, and confirmed an increase outside of normal trends."
The July 2015 memo didn't indicate definitively what had caused the higher lead levels in the children's blood, nor did it show elevated lead for subsequent months. Other emails obtained by Edwards indicate that the data had been sent to the director of the DHHS, as well as to the office of Gov. Rick Snyder (R), sometime between July and September.
The county declared a public health emergency and told people to stop drinking the water in October of this year. And Snyder, who appointed emergency managers overseeing the city's switch to the Flint River as its water source, has signed legislation returning Flint to Detroit's water system. The governor also appointed a task force to investigate what went wrong.
Lead poisoning can cause irreversible health and behavioral problems, and children exposed to too much lead can permanently lose IQ points.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/flint-michigan-water-lead_56784055e4b0b958f657595c
Michigan state officials insisted that the water supply in Flint was safe even though they knew an unusual number of children had suffered lead poisoning, according to a scientist who helped blow the whistle on Flint's water crisis.
Through a public records request, Marc Edwards, a civil engineering professor at Virginia Tech, uncovered a July 2015 memo warning of elevated lead levels in Flint kids' blood.
An internal report from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services warned that lead poisoning rates "were higher than usual for children under age 16 living in the City of Flint during the months of July, August and September, 2014."
In April 2014, city and state officials switched Flint's water source from Detroit's water system to the Flint River, immediately prompting citizen complaints about tap water quality.
Edwards led a team that conducted its own analysis of Flint's water, reporting high lead levels in early September of this year. Brad Wurfel, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, essentially dismissed the allegations in an interview with Michigan Radio, saying the state's analysis of blood data didn't show any signs of a problem.
The government continued to insist that the water was safe until a Flint pediatrician with the Hurley Medical Center reported later in September that the water change corresponded with a significant spike in lead poisoning among city children.
However, the memo obtained by Edwards suggests the state knew about the lead poisoning weeks earlier, yet continued to say the water was okay.
"They discovered scientifically conclusive evidence of an anomalous increase in childhood lead poisoning," Edwards wrote Monday on the website he created to track Flint's water crisis, "but stood by silently as MDEQ officials repeatedly and falsely stated that no spike in blood lead levels (BLL) of children had occurred."
Reached for comment on Monday about the memo, Michigan's DHHS said it had made an honest mistake by attributing the spike in blood lead levels to seasonal variation.
"When initially looking at the citywide and county elevated blood lead level numbers, the increase appeared to be consistent with the routine seasonal fluctuation seen in the summer months," agency spokeswoman Jennifer Eisner said in an email. "It wasn’t until the Hurley report came out that our epidemiologists took a more in-depth look at the data by zip code, controlling for seasonal variation, and confirmed an increase outside of normal trends."
The July 2015 memo didn't indicate definitively what had caused the higher lead levels in the children's blood, nor did it show elevated lead for subsequent months. Other emails obtained by Edwards indicate that the data had been sent to the director of the DHHS, as well as to the office of Gov. Rick Snyder (R), sometime between July and September.
The county declared a public health emergency and told people to stop drinking the water in October of this year. And Snyder, who appointed emergency managers overseeing the city's switch to the Flint River as its water source, has signed legislation returning Flint to Detroit's water system. The governor also appointed a task force to investigate what went wrong.
Lead poisoning can cause irreversible health and behavioral problems, and children exposed to too much lead can permanently lose IQ points.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/flint-michigan-water-lead_56784055e4b0b958f657595c
Comments
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Their EM committed a human rights violation. Buddy abandoned a clean water supply just to be frugal. This is all a part of the state covering their own ass.
Everything about the EMs have been a fail. -
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Their EM committed a human rights violation. Buddy abandoned a clean water supply just to be frugal. This is all a part of the state covering their own ass.
Everything about the EMs have been a fail.
Right
It's just sickening
No telling what the long term effects will be -
More learning disabilities. More violent crime.desertrain10 wrote: »
More arrests, more prisoners. Profit....until the lawsuits eventually start...
I heard about this a few days back and it is terrible. It's been going on for months. The ppl there need to use bottled water for EVERYTHING (cooking, bathing, etc) because the supply is all bad. On top of that there isn't enough bottled water being supplied for the population. This should be one of the top news headlines nationwide. Parents were taking there babies to the doctor wondering if they were being poisoned.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/15/toxic-water-soaring-lead-levels-in-childrens-blood-create-state-of-emergency-in-flint-mich/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6eqc_TSed0
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Lead in the body is a tremendous health hazard. We already know from the lead paint scandals what it can do
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Detroit stand up! Where my.michiganders? MICHIGAN STATE BOUT TO GET THIS NEXT WEEK!
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Lead in the body is a tremendous health hazard. We already know from the lead paint scandals what it can do
Found interesting article that discusses the link between lead expousure and violent crime
http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline
Here's an excerpt....
America's Real Criminal Element: Lead
IN 1994, RICK NEVIN WAS A CONSULTANT working for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development on the costs and benefits of removing lead paint from old houses. This has been a topic of intense study because of the growing body of research linking lead exposure in small children with a whole raft of complications later in life, including lower IQ, hyperactivity, behavioral problems, and learning disabilities.
But as Nevin was working on that assignment, his client suggested they might be missing something. A recent study had suggested a link between childhood lead exposure and juvenile delinquency later on. Maybe reducing lead exposure had an effect on violent crime too?
That tip took Nevin in a different direction. The biggest source of lead in the postwar era, it turns out, wasn't paint. It was leaded gasoline. And if you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early '40s through the early '70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.
Gasoline lead may explain as much as 90 percent of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century.
Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the '60s through the '80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early '90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.
So Nevin dove in further, digging up detailed data on lead emissions and crime rates to see if the similarity of the curves was as good as it seemed. It turned out to be even better: In a 2000 paper (PDF) he concluded that if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the '40s and '50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.
And with that we have our molecule: tetraethyl lead, the gasoline additive invented by General Motors in the 1920s to prevent knocking and pinging in high-performance engines. As auto sales boomed after World War II, and drivers in powerful new cars increasingly asked service station attendants to "fill 'er up with ethyl," they were unwittingly creating a crime wave two decades later. -
Um..this should cause a lot of ppl their jobs/licenses/credibility/career immediately.
But, it won't because this wasn't an accident. -
leftcoastkev wrote: »
More learning disabilities. More violent crime.desertrain10 wrote: »
More arrests, more prisoners. Profit....until the lawsuits eventually start...
I heard about this a few days back and it is terrible. It's been going on for months. The ppl there need to use bottled water for EVERYTHING (cooking, bathing, etc) because the supply is all bad. On top of that there isn't enough bottled water being supplied for the population. This should be one of the top news headlines nationwide. Parents were taking there babies to the doctor wondering if they were being poisoned.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/12/15/toxic-water-soaring-lead-levels-in-childrens-blood-create-state-of-emergency-in-flint-mich/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6eqc_TSed0
Lead has been leaching into their water for at least 8 months to a year
The city council actually wanted to stop using Flint river water back in January 2015 but the EM said no
To be clear the city council who are compromised of elected officials say in the matter was overruled by an unelected Emergency Manager appointed by the state governor
Not until October well after water tested positive for high levels of lead was something substantive done to address the issue
So not only were Michigan citizens being poisoned but communities were being disenfranchised...no surprising black citizens are/were most impacted...thank you GOP
But yea hopefully this story gains some more steam -
Ethnic cleansening drink the water ? its supposed to be red
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This is ? crazy, sue the ? out of them.
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damn this was sent to the deadpool
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a whole generation of mutants finst to be rich ? peckerwoods
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The user and all related content has been deleted.
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I know one thing Synder is done as governor in Michigan next year. I feel bad for those kids in Flint that their lives is damaged due to ? up water system. The governor & EM should be locked up for turning a blind eye to the situation and going on about business as usual. The public school system in Detroit is such a mess(has been for years)teachers been planning sickout days left & right. I don't blame them. Teachers are underpaid & unappreciated, kids can't even learn in decent classrooms. Michigan has the highest car insurance rates throughout the entire country making it near impossible to drive.
Bottom line Michigan is a ? hole of a state to be in. Detroit's population continues to decline on top of it. -
The user and all related content has been deleted.
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Black_Samson wrote: »willhustle wrote: »I know one thing Synder is done as governor in Michigan next year. I feel bad for those kids in Flint that their lives is damaged due to ? up water system. The governor & EM should be locked up for turning a blind eye to the situation and going on about business as usual. The public school system in Detroit is such a mess(has been for years)teachers been planning sickout days left & right. I don't blame them. Teachers are underpaid & unappreciated, kids can't even learn in decent classrooms. Michigan has the highest car insurance rates throughout the entire country making it near impossible to drive.
Bottom line Michigan is a ? hole of a state to be in. Detroit's population continues to decline on top of it.
Michigan is going to ? by design.
running everyone out to sale it to the chinese.
You could be right because in Downtown Detroit they forcing people out they homes by jacking the rent up so that the average person with decent income can't live in the area. See the mayor got Dan Gilbert & other investors involved in some investments down there but Mike Duggan hasn't done very much with the neighborhoods in Detroit. I know. You go anywhere in the city neighborhoods and it's at least 2 or more abandoned homes just about on every block. It's a slim few nice areas in Detroit as is but if you trying to live in a decent area they want $800-900+ to rent. I'll live outside the city before I pay that much.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3mqOqUbvVoY
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn-t__ZlEvk
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