Water polluntion in Flint: Julie Shilling, 4th period apush

The doctor who discovered that the children of Flint, Michigan , were at risk of irreparable brain damage from lead poisoning in the city’s water supply has warned that the problem of “toxic soup” coming out of their household taps may have affected many more than originally thought. As many as 15% of those tested in certain city hotspots have shown dangerous levels of lead in their blood, according to Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha,  who raised the alarm in the summer about metal in the water.

Flint switched its water supply from Lake Huron to the polluted local river in April 2014, immediately triggering widespread complaints of illness and protests. City and state officials repeatedly declared the water was safe and refused to switch back to the safer lake supply until October 2015, shortly after Hanna-Attisha revealed that new tests showed alarming levels of lead in the blood of the city’s youngest children, at an age that makes them particularly vulnerable to such poisoning.  This would be really scary to know that your child could be permanently damaged by drinking and cooking with the water from this town, it is kind of like the epidemic of cholera which was spread by a contaminated water supply in 1866.

 

 

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/10-things-about-flint-water-tragedy_b_9132150.html