The Children of Flint Were Not ‘Poisoned’
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It's important to note every incident where someone is being poisoned with anything we know to be toxic, sure. They all need to be cleaned up. But all I see when I read articles like this is "it's going on everywhere, all the time, so stop worrying". No one is saying these children need medical treatment, that's a false argument. People are saying they need clean water. Arguing any other way is just misleading. And comparing it to other cases of lead pollution like exhaust or paint is again a stupid argument because we banned lead in gas and paint. Those problems aren't solved, but at least they're not getting worse. Meanwhile the Flint water situation was caused directly by the government, who then covered it up until they had to take action. And then still refuse to fix the problem.
It's like if the government wanted to save money so instead of buying new paint for their buildings, they came into your house and pulled the latex paint off your walls. You still have paint on your walls, but it's the lead paint that the latex was covering. It was a contained problem, but now due to actions outside your control, it is suddenly a a problem again and you're expected to fix it. That's what's bullshit about it.
It's like hearing someone say "black lives matter" and someone else steps in and says "all lives matter". Well yes, that's true. But there's a reason people are specifically calling out Flint, and that's because it's a problem caused by the government that now the people impacted are expected to clean up, without having any means to actually perform the work that needs to be done. A mere statement of fact does not begin to describe the situation. It's a matter of principle, of morals.
They weren't "poisoned" and it's just as bad in other places, sure. Now can we fix the damn problem already? Or do you just want to keep making excuses?
It's indicative of a race to the bottom mentality. "Yeah, we're terrible, but we're not as bad as X."
Its purely reactionary, just world fallacy nonsense that is better off ignored.
Oh yeah, just dig up all parts of the water supply that haven't been touched in 50 years, nationwide, and replace them.
In other words, can we fix the problem ? No. Aside from the cost, there's practical problems: we don't even know where half of it is, for one. Parts of it are under streets, bridges, buildings, etc ... They should be torn down
The problem was created by "our grandfaters" saving a buck and now the government "must" fix it.
Okay, but that's just the start. Next up, cleaning all riverwater nationwide of corrosive chemicals.
> It's a matter of principle, of morals.
It could be a matter of life and death, for all the good it'll do. It's impossible. If it was a matter of life and death, we'd be dead.
This cannot be done, for obvious reasons.
>The problem was created by "our grandfathers" saving a buck and now the government "must" fix it.
No, the problem was created by the existing Flint/Michigan government, and yes, it's their problem to fix. This isn't some nebulous "it happened in the past and we're just getting the bill now".
But you're right, it's completely impossible to replace water pipes. No one in the history of ever has ever replaced a water pipe.
Hell, I'll help you. We should be done in an afternoon, right ?
I would posit they have been poisoned, just because we are loath to admit something doesn't make it less true.
Since the logic of the system does not permit individuals to present the damage done to them in material terms that describe the reality of their own experiences, not only is it untrue for them, it’s historically untrue for all similar cases.
I'd claim that the lead poisoning from leaded gas caused more issues to the population than Flint's water crisis or the 70's Detroit water did.
There may have been a severe decline in productivity (and peacefulness, well-being, etc). It's easy to see acute direct effects of poisoning; it's really hard to know for sure if these levels of lead exposure caused violent crime, but people have made a plausible argument that they did. See wikipedia:
> A 2007 report published by The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, authored by Jessica Wolpaw Reyes of Amherst College, found that between 1992 and 2002 the phase-out of lead from gasoline in the U.S. "was responsible for approximately a 56% decline in violent crime". — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis
I don't care what word folks use, but I think there's enough evidence of negative consequences that we should ensure that the lead exposure of the '70s is never repeated—in Flint, in the other cities the article mentioned, or anywhere else.
> It is not possible, statistically speaking, to distinguish the increase that occurred at the height of the contamination crisis [in Flint] from other random variations over the previous decade.
Whereas;
> Right now in Michigan, 8.8 percent of children in Detroit, 8.1 percent of children in Grand Rapids and an astounding 14 percent of children in Highland Park surpass the C.D.C. reference level. Flint is at 2.4 percent.
By those numbers Flint was, apparently, another media manufactured hysteria which happen to fit the desired narrative and drive a lot of clicks.
There seems to be an endemic propensity of current mass media to run away with the facts in an effort to see who can express the most virtuous outrage and bring some chosen enemy-of-the-people to justice.
When those in media begin to feel like their job is not so much fact finding as it is to “protect democracy” or some-such, the news writers seem to start acting like over-zealous prosecutors instead of neutral truth seekers.
The problems in Flint could be traced directly to an erroneous decision by the Michigan state government to use the Flint river water without introducing anti-corrosion chemicals into it (thus causing corrosion of the existing, safe lead pipes). This creates a clear narrative of good and evil which is attractive to the media.
Other cities suffering from lead problems are often due to legacy lead paint or lead pipes installed on homeowner’s property. It’s much harder to see a narrative in that rather than an existing, systemic problem which would not be seen as newsworthy.
The last time something like Flint happened was the CDC coverup of lead contamination in the Washington, D.C. water system almost 2 decades ago, which did receive national attention although not as much as Flint has. (One could speculate as to the reasons why)
It's great that relatively few children seem to be harmed. It's also true that the city, state and American Red Cross delivered bottled water and filters to the people likely to be most significantly affected.
And they try to define the length of exposure to when the water source was changed. That might be true but they can’t know that. And it’s likely not true, a water system with lead pipes will have specified an acceptable lead level that can be present in safety samples. Even though there is no safe level.
The numbers matter. Our units today are grams of lead per liter of blood. These children had an increased blood-lead content of 1.2 x 10^-7. One study I found[1] cites a IQ loss of 1.5 points for each 5 x 10^-6. Only the extreme outliers - a percentage point of children - passed that level. That's not nothing, but I would bet (without evidence) that concussions/head injuries from High School Football causes greater IQ loss on average.
Lots of factors, fair and unfair, affect how our lives turn out. This one was unfair. It sucked. There are far bigger fish to fry.
[1]https://today.duke.edu/2017/03/lead-exposure-childhood-linke...
No, which is part of the point of this article. They are not a generation of brain damaged people, nor are the kids of flint brain damaged and requiring immediate medical attention. Calling them such is harmful for multiple reasons, some of which the article stated.
Another point is that even due to this, lead levels in the people of flint have fallen from 11.x to 3.x percent as per the article.
They don't argue it's not a problem, but they disagree with the hysteria. Not the facts.
In 2011, 483 tons of lead were emitted so a small group of prosperous people can enjoy private air travel. EPA data from the same year shows airports as the top source of lead emissions in 42 states [0].
I think the costs of lead abatement should be included in the price of AvGas, or its use should be discontinued entirely.
[0] U.S. EPA. Calculating Piston-Engine Aircraft Airport Inventories for Lead for the 2011 National Emissions Inventory. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA-420-B-13-040, 2013. Page 5
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lead-in-aviation-...
As an aviation buff, I like seeing the planes go by, but I hate thinking about what I breathe when they are gone.
My next move will definitely factor in locality to a regional airport.
I want to reiterate that small propeller planes that seat 2-6 people make up virtually the entire market for leaded aviation fuel. Larger propeller planes typically have turboprop engines which burn kerosene like most jet/commercial aircraft. There is a big cost upon society caused by a small number of people, for something that is completely unnecessary (private air travel).
But assuming the numbers here are being presented in a way that accurately captures the situation, that is not the case and in fact even those "in crisis" today are only imbibing levels that while too high are not even as high as Americans were getting on with at all time prior to the 70's.
That people at some point in the past had it worse does not mean it's ok that it happens today. When my dad was born, infant mortality in the US was 4x what it is now. But that doesn't mean that having 4x as many babies die is ok. Especially when the cause is an undemocratic "emergency manager" trying to save a small amount of money.
In Flint's case both the state health department and the EPA had they acted much sooner could have minimized the damage. The health department administrators are facing jail time for their crimes. Administrators of the Flint water department are also facing jail time. The EPA staffers so far have escaped any punishments whatsoever.
Making that argument is like saying "people used to get polio all the time in the 20s, why are you worried about an increase in polio now"? Because it's polio, not a free puppy. Any amount of polio is too much polio.
"Based on this more comprehensive view of the data, we are forced to admit that the furor over this issue seems way out of proportion to the actual dangers to the children from lead exposure."
This is an increasingly serious problem. While everybody will know about the 'Flint Poisoning' because it's an emotional story that spread through social media (and traditional media alike) like wildfire, I imagine in the end only a tiny percent of people will ever hear of this. The old Thomas Jefferson quote is more true than ever: "The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.". The sad thing is that that quote's from 1807.
I can see why people would want to ratchet down on the rhetoric because words like "poison" make people think that someone is culpable and can be held accountable.
I'm certain that there is a class of people in this country that wouldn't want that.
I'm gladly, genuinely, that this will not result in a "lost generation," but there is indeed no safe level of lead exposure.
Should have been flagged as this.
“Too” implies afterthought/secondary status. “Too” is, in any case, not part of what BLM is about. That other lives matter is not something BLM as a group denies, of course, its just an issue that is out of scope for the organization.
> because that extra word ends all of the bickering
No, no it doesn't.
> what the movement was about - that we need public policies that respect the lives of black lives also.
No, BLM is not centrally a policy advocacy organization.
s/white/poor