Lead poisoning resulting from the man-made health disaster in Flint, Mich. continues to affect a community of about 99,000 people. While Michigan’s state officials have switched back the water supply source from the Flint River to the Detroit water system fed by Lake Huron, the aged pipes of many service lines, corroded by the polluted water from Flint River, are still leaching lead into the water. This has forced Flint residents to rely on donations of bottled water for clean drinking water.
A permanent solution — to replace every lead-based water service line — has not yet been approved due to struggles to define costs and funding allocations. In addition to ensuring the repair of Flint’s crumbling water infrastructure, many Flint leaders intend for state and federal aid to be utilized to augment pre-school programs and learning support services, which aim to help lead-poisoned children suffering from learning disabilities. Infants and children are known to be particularly susceptible to the effects of lead, which is a potent neurotoxin.
According to the World Health Organization, lead irreversibly damages nerve cells in developing brain tissue, causing developmental and learning difficulties. Various studies have linked elevated lead levels to decreased IQs, learning disabilities, reduced attention spans and even violent behavior. The extent to which the lead poisoning of Flint children would translate into learning disabilities or developmental delays is difficult to estimate since even minute amounts of lead have been found to have adverse effects on child development. Furthermore, there is no level of lead exposure that has been shown to be safe for children or adults.
Yet, despite the known effects of lead exposure and the efforts of public health activism to eliminate the sources of lead, millions of Americans in other communities continue to rely on water flowing through pipes and plumbing fixtures lined with lead, most of which were installed before the 1970s. About 3.3 million lead-based utility service lines, according to a 1990 study, are concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest.
This is a rough estimate of a problem that has not yet been properly quantified nor pinpointed.
As many of these aged lead pipes may begin to leach lead into the water, health experts warn that Flint’s water crisis may be duplicated in other areas. Inadequate enforcement of water treatment methods can result in unbalanced water chemistry, which, if it is too acidic or contaminated with overly high levels of chlorides, can lead to the corrosion of pipes and water contamination.
“If we have functioning public health agencies and water authorities, families shouldn’t need to worry about it,” Dr. Bruce Lanphear, an expert on the impact of neurotoxins at the Simon Fraser University, told National Geographic. “Unfortunately we have starved public health, we have neglected lead hazards and we have failed to maintain our public health infrastructure.”
Despite the growing need to rebuild the nation’s water infrastructure, funds are diminishing. According to The New York Times, the drinking water division of the Environmental Protection Agency has lost 15 percent of its $100 million annual budget since 2006 as well as more than a 10th of its staff. In 2013, 17 states slashed drinking-water budgets by more than a fifth, as reported by the Association of State Drinking Water Administrators.
Efforts to combat lead poisoning have also been stymied by partisan conflicts over spending and federal regulation of reconstruction projects. If lead pipes are only partially replaced, this can release even more contaminants into the water, as evidenced in the efforts to reign in the 2001 lead poisoning in Washington, D.C. Until lead-based water lines are entirely replaced with lead-free alternatives, the best recourse, as some experts contend, is to aggressively enforce federal regulations and to better monitor water treatment.
Some communities, such as Lansing, Mich., which is less than 60 miles from Flint, have already taken the initiative to remove lead lines from their jurisdictions. A $42 million project begun in 2004 by the Lansing Board of Water and Light has replaced 13,500 lead lines with copper ones and is continuing to remove the fewer than 500 lead lines remaining in the territory.
While lead-contaminated water is the not the only source of lead poisoning, it is a significant factor which can easily affect an entire city. According to a 2014 study of childhood blood levels compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 40 percent of the 27 states that reported lead test results were found to have higher rates of lead poisoning than those associated with the current lead poisoning in Flint. How much of these lead poisoning cases can be attributed to lead-contaminated water is still unknown.
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