A Few too many Words About Flint MI

I read Stephen Rodrick's Rolling Stone piece about the water quality disaster in Flint and I am angry. First, that this could happen at all, in this day, in this country, on such a huge scale is horrifying. Second, that indisputable scientific facts from college professors, laboratories, and pediatricians, as well as desperate pleas from parents of sick children were systematically discredited and ignored by politicians. Third, that the comments section at the end of the article immediately digressed into inane, angry rants between our ridiculous political parties. Stupid humans are missing the point. Please read the article and then skip the comments unless you want to feel like puking.

Regulatory water quality analysis was my business for decades. Drinking water, industrial discharge, landfills, hazardous and radioactive waste clean-up, analytical methods, data quality control: these are things I know. In my lab days, I read and implemented regulatory codes and quality procedures and wrote many of our Standard Operating Procedures for sampling, preparation and analysis for trace metals. After 18 years away from all that to raise my babies, I still know the EPA test methods and the emission and absorption wavelengths for lead analysis, and I can probably still operate the atomic absorption and emission spectrophotometers to do the analysis. I started my career as a sampling technician, and talked to many a concerned mother as I took drinking water samples from their kitchen sinks. I cared very deeply about what I did in my job, and I have been steadily concerned since I retired with the weakening of the EPA,  and the lack of funds to ensure that we maintain all the ground we painstakingly made up since the 1970s. Humans can be so incredibly stupid and short sighted.

I'd been unable to focus on the news out of Flint when the story broke, and when I did, last week, finally pay attention, the first thing I read was the raw data analysis reports for lead in the homes sampled not by a regulatory agency but by Dr. Marc Edwards, a water-treatment expert who teaches at Virginia Tech and has received a MacArthur genius grant. Dr. Edwards and his students were so alarmed by what they were seeing and hearing that they undertook a massive study at their own expense to find out why children were getting sick in Flint. There is actually a crowd funded site to reimburse the university for the analytical costs, because they are staggering and I know why in excruciating detail that maybe only another lab rat like me will understand...

GoFundMe Flint Water Study

Summary of Flint Water testing results

Raw Data tables for Lead in Flint Water     This is the one that made me cry.

I read the reports, and I looked at the lead results. I refreshed my memory for the action level for lead in drinking water, and saw that many of the Flint homes recorded over 1000 times the action level, at hazardous waste levels, not drinking water levels, for not one, but for many homes. The data made my stomach lurch and I burst into tears. I'd never seen anything like this data. I cried for the children and the families who were paying to be poisoned. I cried for the stupidity of the politicians in the city of Flint, and the State of Michigan, for the failure of the EPA, and the media, and I cried for the goodness of those who doggedly and expensively chased down the source of the problem.

Here's the Rolling Stone Article:    Who Poisoned Flint?

After I read the article, I was even more furious at the incompetence, belligerence and neglect of the elected officials, who tried to discredit concerned citizens and scientists at every turn. They are all really sorry now, of course, and many have resigned, after the President declared an emergency and sent in troops with bottled water. The truth came out, only about a year too late.

I couldn't care less about Republicans vs. Democrats or Liberal vs. Conservatives right now, and those who default to that tired old argument are as much a part of the problem as the local, state and federal governments and agencies who failed to protect children from the brain damage that the toxic lead levels will cause. "The long-term effects of elevated blood lead levels in children may include slow development, reduced IQ scores, learning disabilities, hearing loss, reduced height and hyperactivity." Chelation of the blood is the only treatment for elevated lead levels, by the way. And boiling water for bacteria only concentrates the lead further. This is what a very vulnerable, socially and economically disadvantaged city can add to the list of woes for their children, who already attend underfunded run down, toxic schools.

I'm just sick. I'm mad as hell, and don't have a clue what to do about it, but share what I know and hope for better from our elected officials.

I write this from a state without a functioning budget since July, at a political impasse resulting in only emergency funds being released, where the fallout from unpaid vendors like myself, and unsupported public institutions from medical to educational is staggering. I can't wait to see where the economic collapse of 2008 and more stupid human tricks take us next, because it seemingly will not end, just reverberate in unexpected and awful ways for decades to come. I predict there will be many more Flints in our future, especially as we continue to trash our precious groundwater reserves with fracking. 

Is it any wonder I have so many worries for my children? For all our children?

America, you are breaking my heart into little pieces.

Sorry. And now, a happy picture in apology for this unhappy post...... I'll try to lighten up next time.

Tucker kisses make everything better.

PS I forgot to mention that the symbol for lead is Pb, from the Greek word Plumbum, which is the root of our word plumber and plumbing, hence the extraneous b in the words. That b always bugged me until I learned my chemical symbols. 

Flint's Pb problem is very much a plumbing problem.