The Brains of Flint’s Children, Imperiled by Lead, Could Still Escape Damage

I find this to be a fascinating article because simplistic emotional arguments disseminated in the press, presumably by researchers and regulators themselves and scientifically illiterate journalists ("lead is unsafe at any level and children with a Blood Lead Level of 5 are poisoned"), are then tempered when real people are involved:

This does not mean that children at this level are poisoned,” Dietrich says. “There are very few studies of low-level lead exposure, but there is nothing in the data that suggests that children will have negative impacts of short-term low-level exposure” over their lives. In fact, he notes, the 5 μg/dL figure was set because 97.5 percent of young children fall below it, not because blood lead levels at that threshold result in permanent harm