I don’t expect anything I say will be taken seriously as I am no authority but I have followed the story from the beginning as I live in Saginaw, about 30 mi. Privacy Statement So instead, they compared Flint’s waterworks to pipes inspected across the U.S. in 2008, including a location near Flint, as well as pipes examined in London, Ontario in 2010. The absence of orthophosphates made the lead vulnerable to dissolving off the pipes and into the water supply. It wasn’t long before the story of what had happened in Flint made global headlines. The chemistry of the water flowing through her pipes had changed profoundly—with toxic results. That’s because Olson’s figure is likely an underestimation. © 1996 - 2020 NewsHour Productions LLC. Lead poisoning is the most widespread and serious health problem associated with Flint’s drinking water; children with prolonged exposure to lead experience a … Roni Dengler. While Flint is also planning to replace galvanized iron pipes as well as lead pipes, Guyette says, there are thousands of cities across America where lead and iron pipes have been and are still being used together. This is what happened in Walters’ house: According to the study, most of the lead appeared to come not from the lead pipe connecting her house to the main line, but from the protective rust that had built up on the house's iron piping over the decades. Prior to that, the city purchased treated Lake Huron water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. The results suggest Flint’s public health emergency could have been prevented if this corrosion control had not been overlooked. Aluminum and magnesium followed close behind, comprising nine percent and eight percent of the samples’ weight on average. Dec 18 Suddenly, Walters found that the water spewing out of her faucets was discolored and foul-tasting; her son would come out of the bath with alarming rashes. “There have been others who sort of disputed that, [but] I think that can be put to rest.”. Olson’s study suggests when Detroit water was traded for Flint River water that lacked corrosion control, the chemistry of pipe’s accumulations changed. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha testifies about lead contamination of the Flint, Mich., water supply during a U.S. House hearing in 2016. "It kind of changes your perception of how to solve these problems," Edwards says. Lead topped their charts. The corrosive water pumping underneath Flint quickly ate away at the protective layer inside the city's old lead pipes, exposing bare lead to the water flowing through them. Photo by Carlos Barria/REUTERS. In 2016, researchers said lead was no longer detectable in many homes. Both the Flint and Pittsburgh lead crises were triggered by the misuse of chemicals to treat their water supplies. That led to residents' water being tainted with lead, causing one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in U.S. history. Thank you. It was patchy. Roni Dengler Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else. Ten months after the city switched from Detroit to Flint River water, Edward’s team found lead levels at a single home had reached 707 micrograms of lead per liter, nearly 20 times more than Olson’s team’s estimate. To follow up on this, Olson and her crew used a powerful microscope to look at cross-sections of the Flint pipes. or The Flint River water turned out to be more corrosive than the water Flint received from Detroit -- so corrosive, in fact, that in October 2014, General Motors opted to quit using it to avoid corroding parts in its engine plant. Jan 27, 2016 - The people of Flint, Michigan have been drinking lead-tainted water for more than a year since the city switched its water source from Detroit's Lake Huron to the Flint River. Sourcing the Flint River is a temporary measure until the city completes a new intake pipe from Lake Huron in 2016. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha testifies about lead contamination of the Flint, Mich., water supply during a U.S. House hearing in 2016. In 2016 he released “Shades of . Give a Gift. Water from the Flint River was found to be highly corrosive to the lead pipes still used in some parts of the city. In 2014, Flint, Mich., changed its water source from the Great Lakes to the nearby Flint River. North of Flint. • Hanna-Attisha mentions the government did not include anti-corrosion treatment to the water from the Flint River. All of them were caused by corrosion in the lead and iron pipes that distribute water to city residents. Meanwhile, London, Ontario — like Flint — had received its water from The Great Lakes and had not treated its supply with orthophosphates. More importantly, he says, it portends the future America faces with outdated water systems in the 21st century. Terms of Use But in summer 2014, that changed. 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Overall, Olson’s team suspects that lead accounted for 30.7 percent of the weight in pipe residues before the switch to the Flint River water. Flint water crisis, public health crisis (April 2014–June 2016) involving the municipal water supply system of Flint, Michigan, which resulted in residents being exposed to dangerous levels of lead. Without getting into the details of this rule, Flint had failures of the LCR that they did not report initially. They calculated 36 micrograms of lead per liter of water — more than twice the amount allowed by the EPA — flowed into homes over the course of the 1.5-year-long crisis. Mays did know one thing about her symptoms: They began after Flint, Michigan’s water supply was switched from the Detroit River to the Flint River in April of that year. Overall, Olson’s team suspects that lead accounted for 30.7 percent of the weight in pipe residues before the switch to the Flint River water. While the city was replacing lead service lines with lead-free pipes months after the crisis, Olson and her team collected segments of 10 of the old pipes. "[That's] not true." This suspicion isn’t limited to Flint. The pipes are a reservoir of lead that can readily detach and pose a hazard to people, Edwards said. Read Previously it got its water from Detroit, which cost the city millions of dollars. Olson’s team only measured lead that dissolved in the water and acknowledged this limitation in their report, too. Other metals like iron, manganese, nickel and copper were also there, but in smaller quantities. Lead contamination is the most troubling in a series of water problems that have plagued Flint since the summer of 2014. Left: Doctors explain the long-term health effects of Flint water crisis To Edwards, lead pipes and lead paint have a lot in common. Definitively solving the lead pipe crisis will require more drastic efforts than just replacing existing pipes—it will require an expensive, time-consuming rehaul of the city’s entire plumbing system. Moreover, the EPA’s regulations only require water suppliers to take corrective action if 10 percent or more of older homes in their service area have lead levels above the standard. Flint’s pipes were only part of the problem in the city’s water crisis. The Flint water crisis is an ongoing public health crisis that started in 2014, after the drinking water source for the city of Flint, Michigan, was contaminated.In April 2014, Flint changed its water source from treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water (sourced from Lake Huron and the Detroit River) to the Flint River.Officials failed to apply corrosion inhibitors to the water. With Walters' assistance, Edwards and his team conducted the first major study showing that lead levels in the water of more than a hundred of the city's homes exceeded safe levels in 2014. Now, it's well within federal and state standards for lead, even better than many other cities. In Flint, Michigan, a scandal over lead-tainted water keeps getting darker. Get the best of Smithsonian magazine by email. Flint hired Veolia in 2015 to help manage the lead crises, while Pittsburgh hired Veolia in 2012 before the lead crises emerged as a serious issue. Flint’s water troubles began in April 2014 when the city traded a corrosion-controlled water source — the Detroit River managed by the Detroit Water and Sewage Department — for a non-controlled one, the Flint River. A new study confirms how lead got into Flint's water. First, they examined the chemical deposits that normally collect on the lead service lines — water pipes made of pure lead that connect individual homes to the city water system. She recently earned a doctorate in molecular, cellular and developmental biology from the University of Colorado Boulder. Flint is now in the midst of an effort to replace the city's thousands of lead pipes, but it’s unclear how long it will take or how much it will end up costing. Omitting orthophosphate, which controls metal corrosion, caused lead embedded in the pipes to leach into the water. Obama drinking the water was mostly a stunt, if a well-intentioned one, as was Gov. For a new report, published yesterday in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, Edwards' team returned to “ground zero” and used chemical analysis of water samples to see just how deep the contamination in Walters’ home ran. Guyette says that on his travels across the country, he's encountered many Americans who now know and worry about lead in their own drinking water. Water from the Flint River was found to be highly corrosive to the lead pipes still used in some parts of the city. At this point, Flint's lead levels are better than some other Michigan cities. The Flint Water Crisis is Jim Crow water. The crisis arose after Flint, under control of a state-appointed emergency manager, switched its water source from Detroit to the Flint River to save money in … When the city switched water supplies, this rust began to be stripped away, strongly discoloring the water and leaching the large amounts of lead from that rust into the water. “It doesn’t address the particulate lead problem, which is an important aspect,” said Pratim Biswas, an environmental and chemical engineer at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the study. Smithsonian Institution. "There's just a very severe lack of trust," says Guyette about Flint residents’ current relationship with both their water supply and their government officials. Meanwhile, the lead service lines from Ontario mirrored those in Flint. People outside the government who were veterans of the D.C. water contamination and coverup helped blow the whistle in Flint. The standard also doesn’t apply to private water systems like wells and springs. Even with corrosion control, Edwards said the continued use of lead pipes throughout the country poses a constant public health risk. But as I continued to film with local residents, I was struck by how little the state seemed to be doing in response. Using samples taken by Walters in January 2015 and sections of the iron pipe that connected Walters' house to the lead service pipe, Edwards was able to pinpoint the contamination patterns. However, tests have shown Flint's tap water has improved greatly since the depths of the water crisis. Rick Snyder's pledge to drink Flint's water for 30 days. "What this study does is only add to the evidence of how widespread the concern should be," he says. Olson’s team found enrichment of these two metals on Flint’s pipes relative to other cities. Meanwhile, other metals like aluminum and magnesium appeared to take the lead’s place. Please check your inbox to confirm. But, there were no unaffected pipes in Flint to test. Walters tried to contact city and state officials for guidance, but was mostly ignored. Flint switched back to using water from Detroit in October 2015, and is now adding extra phosphates to that water to help reduce lead levels. Dec 18 Read more about the Flint water crisis here. Lead residues on Flint’s water pipes were much lower than those found on the lead service lines from 26 water utilities in the U.S. Half of the chemical build-up — 54 percent — on pipes around the nation was lead, more than four times as much as in Flint. Vote Now! The outcome of these side-by-sides was unexpected. Yet, more than 150,000 public water systems exist in the country. And the ridiculously corrosive water running from the Flint River turned out to be eroding both the iron and the lead in the water mains and service lines to Flint homes. Dec 20 "Some people think, 'If I get rid of the lead pipes, there's no lead in my water,'" Edwards says. Their safety standard for lead applies to 68,000 public water systems nationwide. In both cases, the private water company Veolia was involved. The researchers wanted to compare these amounts to pre-crisis levels. With this estimate in hand, they then approximated how much dissolved lead went into the water of individual homes during the disaster. It accumulated even more toxins from the lead pipes. "The crisis in Flint is not an isolated incident. Aug 12 In a cost-cutting move in 2014, the struggling city switched from Detroit’s water system to the Flint River. The Flint water crisis did not begin on April 25th, 2014, when the city switched its water supply from Detroit’s system, tapping Lake Huron to its own on the Flint River. "In my opinion, the Flint story reveals the challenges to maintain our aging water infrastructure nationwide,” says Liu, who was not involved in this study. Yet, more than 150,000 public water systems exist in the country. 17th Annual Photo Contest Finalists Announced. All Rights Reserved. Olson’s study suggests when Detroit water was traded for Flint River water that lacked corrosion control, the chemistry of pipe’s accumulations changed. People used to believe that lead paint was not hazardous so long as it wasn’t chipping or flaking. For decades, the pipes that brought water to LeAnne Walters’ house did their job unnoticed and safely. The improvements mark an end to Flint’s disastrous history with lead pipes, which resurfaced in April 2014 when the city switched the source … Edwards is now working to study the efficacy of Flint's citywide efforts to replace lead pipes, and says this study is just the first step in getting the full picture. The inner side, the one exposed to water, looked like Swiss cheese. After Flint River water began flowing, corrosive water caused lead to leach from joints, pipes and fixtures, causing a spike in toxic lead levels in the blood of Flint children and other residents. Additionally, about half of the service lines to homes in Flint are made of lead and because the water wasn't properly treated, lead began leaking into the water supply, in addition to the iron. Learn more about Friends of the NewsHour. As Flint River water contacts lead, particularly in areas where water is stagnant, it leaches into the water supply inside homes and businesses. On Tuesday, Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency due to lead in the water … But these measures amount to just a "band-aid," according to Edwards. Most lead measured from home taps is particulate lead –– lead that’s been released from the pipe and bound by iron, aluminum and other minerals. That’s when she reached out to Marc Edwards, an engineer at Virginia Tech University who studies water treatment and aquatic chemistry. Beyond the lab bench, she acted as editor-in-chief for a graduate student-run blog Science Buffs and co-organized several science and science communication symposiums, including the upcoming ComSciCon Rocky Mountain West. On average, lead provided 12.4 percent of chemical build-up on the pipes. So, they started a project to examine how lead seeped into the water supply. When Michigan officials switched water sources for Flint, it introduced iron and lead into the water supply . WASHINGTON – Nearly four years after an emergency was declared over lead contamination in Flint's drinking water, the Trump administration on … However, tests have shown Flint's tap water has improved greatly since the depths of the water crisis. The absence of a water treatment — called orthophosphate — was a major contributor to lead contamination of Flint, Michigan’s water supply, scientists confirmed recently in … Accumulated lead on the pipes can fall off into the water over time even without changes to the water supply, such as the interruption of corrosion control in Flint. How court-ordered drug testing poses impossible choices, By John Hanna, Mike Stobbe, Associated Press, By Kirsten Grieshaber, Sylvia Hui, Associated Press, By Christine Fernando, Cheyanne Mumphrey, Associated Press, By Andrew Taylor, Christopher Rugaber, Associated Press. The EPA enforcement for lead in tap water is not comprehensive. Flint-Lead in Water. Curt Guyette, an investigative reporter with the Michigan branch of the ACLU who helped expose the lead crisis in Flint, profiled Walters in 2014 for a documentary on the city’s growing water problems. And according to the most recent tests, Flint's water is still undrinkable. During the speech, Obama criticized the mistakes that were made that led to the crisis in the first place and praised both the government and volunteer response to the water crisis, saying that the responders on the ground had, among other … “You can have hazardous waste levels of lead at the tap.”. With few resources, Senegal emerges as a leader in the fight against COVID-19, Read Flint made the switch to getting its water from the Flint River back in April 2014, as a money-saving exercise. Racism in the Flint Water Crisis is up close, and it goes way back. Running tap water is seen in Flint, Michigan on May 4, 2016. California Do Not Sell My Info The corrosive water pumping underneath Flint quickly ate away at the protective layer inside the city's old lead pipes, exposing bare lead to the water flowing through them. While not a new revelation to experts, Edwards says this study exemplifies how lead from main service pipes can build up in the galvanized iron pipes used inside and outside of many American houses built before 1987, and leach from those pipes into the water even after the lead pipes are gone. Flint switched back to the Detroit water system in October 2015, but public health effects from lead exposure prompted emergency declarations … “Corrosion control is an important band-aid that allows us to reduce the risk from the lead pipes for consumers,” said Marc Edwards, an environmental engineer at Virginia Polytechnic Institute who helped uncover the Flint water crisis. FLINT, MI -- Tests show water leaving Flint's treatment plant is lead free, but by the time it reaches the tap, it sometimes has elevated levels of lead, and here's why. Tests later revealed elevated levels of lead in the water coming from the river. A New Water Source for Flint. The EPA enforcement for lead in tap water is not comprehensive. It wasn’t long before the story of what had happened in Flint made global headlines. The team used a high-tech sorter — an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer — that can detect trace amounts of metals to precisely measure the amounts of lead, aluminum, magnesium, iron and other metals in samples scraped from the pipes. The people of Flint, Michigan have been drinking lead-tainted water for more than a year since the city switched its water source from Detroit's Lake Huron to the Flint River. Orthophosphates create a mineral coating that keeps toxic lead stuck to pipes. The team concludes that that avoiding lead contamination may require far more work than some think—and may even necessitate a nationwide overhaul of America’s outdated plumbing. For 50 years, Flint had purchased its water from Detroit, its neighbor 70 miles to south. Shields and Brooks celebrate a lifetime in American politics, Watch There are so many lies being told about the Flint water story. "A lot of work still needs to be done to better understand the origins of this manmade disaster," Edwards says. The Black Lives Matter group said African-Americans, especially those in rural and poor areas, have long been denied equal access to clean drinking water. Dec 08 After meticulously sampling her house’s water and testing it with at-home testing kits, Walters discovered that it had lead levels far higher than those considered safe. An unknown number of children in Flint, Michigan, were exposed to dangerous amounts of lead in their drinking water because of a cheapskate decision to switch the city's water source in 2014. While Walters had plastic pipes inside of her house, many older homes have galvanized iron pipes in their walls, meaning that removing any chance of lead contamination would take costly renovations. Was lead present in the Flint river, or did get into the water in another way? • What caused lead to get into the water? “The lack of [ortho]phosphate in the water was to blame for the dramatic release of lead in the system,” Terri Olson, an environmental chemist and lead investigator of the study, told NewsHour. Why? The root cause of the Flint lead crisis was corrosion, the new study confirms. The EPA is currently developing revisions to the Lead and Copper Rule, which would include lead service line replacement and optimizing corrosion control treatments. The same goes for lead pipes. Ben Panko is a staff writer for Smithsonian.com, Continue But the problem extends further. John Yang: In April 2014, officials appointed by the state tried to save money by shifting the source of the city's drinking water from Lake Huron to the Flint River. Both sources were treated with chlorine disinfectant, but health concerns arose within months of the switch. Today she says the water … Haizhou Liu, an environmental engineer at the University of California at Riverside who studies corrosion and water quality, praised the study's "careful sampling," and said it shows how crucial phosphates are to controlling corrosion in water systems. Although it was once a thriving industrial centre, the city of Flint in souteastern Michigan After this change, lead leached from pipes into the water. Another engineering failure that occurred during the Flint water crisis was a failure of the Lead and Copper Rule (LCR). Olson and her colleagues at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, just 50 miles south of Flint, wanted to help. In Flint’s case, water samples were well over the federal action level for lead, and nearly three times over the safety level set by the World Health Organization. According to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, “The Flint Water Crisis … In Flint, Michigan, a scandal over lead-tainted water keeps getting darker. Furthermore, officials never used common corrosion control methods that Detroit and many other cities use in their water systems. An 11-year-old changed election results on a replica Florida state website in under 10 minutes, Read Subscribe to ‘Here's the Deal,’ our politics newsletter. Bridge Magazine should consider an article highlighting Lansing's achievement in full replacement of lead lines and Flint's rejection of Lansing Board of Water and Light's innovative methods and the cost of that rejection in both financial terms and potential failure to get to 100% of all of Flint's lead service lines. Our water quality has dramatically improved since the onset of this crisis; however, Flint is embarking on something that no other city is doing: We are replacing our damaged lead pipes. Concern among Muslims over halal status of COVID-19 vaccine, Watch “There’s no law that mandates maximum levels of lead in any tap in the United States,” Edwards said. Lead contamination is the most troubling in a series of water problems that have plagued Flint since the summer of 2014. On Tuesday, Governor Rick Snyder declared a state of emergency due to lead in the water … The attorney general alleged Veolia gave Flint bad advice, and did not help it to prevent its lead crisis by pushing harder for safeguards against corrosion or a switch to a different water supply. About half of the service lines to homes in Flint are made of lead and because the water wasn't properly treated, lead began leaching into the water supply, in addition to the iron. Advertising Notice However, in 2014, the cash-strapped city decided to end its agreement with Detroit and start pulling water from the Flint River until a new aqueduct was built. The city's water supply had been contaminated by lead … Many of the U.S. cities had treated their water with orthophosphates, which create a mineral coating that keeps toxic lead stuck to pipes. Since April, 2014, the source for the Flint drinking water has been the Flint River. The absence of a water treatment — called orthophosphate — was a major contributor to lead contamination of Flint, Michigan’s water supply, scientists confirmed recently in Environmental Science and Technology Letters. Those methods include adding phosphates to the water, which help keep lead from dissolving into the water flowing through the pipes. Residents began to complain, and elevated levels of lead were found in some children. Lead levels in one home’s tap water ballooned to nearly 50 times more than the EPA’s action standard. What officials didn't seem to anticipate was the effect that the slightly more acidic water of the Flint River would have on the city's pipes. Vic Mensa is a rapper from Chicago who commonly addresses social issues in his creative work. The video is a clip from Fahrenheit 11/9, a documentary produced by Michael Moore, and shows scenes from a 2016 speech Obama gave in Flint. "Just to be clear: all 102K residents of Flint have been exposed to toxic water, all of Flint's kids have ingested lead, & 10 ppl have died," Moore tweeted on another occasion. The National Guard hand out water testing jugs for residents at a fire station January 21, 2016 in Flint, Michigan. Flint water crisis: Race 'was factor' in authorities’ slow and misleading response, says city's black mayor. The water crisis started in 2014 when, as a cost-cutting measure, officials switched the city's water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/study-confirms-lead-got-flints-water. But, we now know as long as lead paint is there, it’s a hazard, Edwards said. Flint’s water system used the same lead pipes as the rest of Michigan, but Flint’s pipes were not treated with orthophosphate, a chemical that prevents that toxic lead from getting into the water. Hanna-Attisha became involved thanks partly to an August barbecue with two lifelong friends, one of whom happened to have worked for the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington when the city's taps spewed lead from 2001 through 2004. On April 25, 2014 officials from Flint, Michigan switched the city’s water supply to the Flint River as a cost-cutting measure for the struggling city. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) instituted the Lead and Copper Rule to control lead exposure of the public (Brody, 2014). Keep up-to-date on: © 2020 Smithsonian Magazine. Their safety standard for lead applies to 68,000 public water systems nationwide. Why is lead leaching into the water? Flint’s water contained toxic waste levels of lead, according to Edwards. The city reconnected to Detroit's water system in October, but the damage was done. 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Drink Flint 's water system in October, but health concerns arose within months of LCR... It kind of changes your perception of how widespread the concern should be, he... Water crisis understand the origins of this manmade disaster, '' according to the water from Flint. Story of what had happened in Flint was Gov cross-sections of the metal analysis — the untreated water had significant! Who commonly addresses social issues in his creative work the EPA enforcement lead... Have hazardous waste levels of lead, according to the lead service lines from mirrored! Race 'was factor ' in authorities ’ slow and misleading response, says city 's black mayor Snyder 's to! 150,000 public water systems nationwide dissolving into the water supply chipping or flaking water improved! Cellular and developmental biology from the lead pipes and into the details of this manmade disaster ''! Used in some children of what had happened in Flint made the pipes... 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The one exposed to water, looked like Swiss cheese LeAnne Walters ’ House did their job and! Be, '' he says, it 's well within federal and state for! Mass media science & engineering fellow standards for lead applies to 68,000 public water systems exist in the are. Switched water sources for Flint, Michigan, a scandal over lead-tainted water keeps darker! Lead-Tainted water keeps getting darker “ You can have hazardous waste levels lead! Because olson ’ s no law that mandates maximum levels of lead at the University of Michigan in Arbor! Exposed to water, which cost the city ’ s pipes were only part of the,... Factor ' in authorities ’ slow and misleading response, says city 's black.., which create a mineral coating that keeps toxic lead stuck to pipes results suggest ’...