(task) Flint water crisis: What's in that contaminated water | US news | The Guardian

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> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/22/flint-water-crisis-contaminated-water-contains <http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/22/flint-water-crisis-contaminated-water-contains>
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> Flint water crisis: What's in that contaminated water
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> What does it mean that residents of Flint, Michigan <http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/michigan>, consumed water with dangerously high levels of lead for years before it was recognized as a problem? Here are some fast facts about just what’s in the Flint water and how it came to pass.
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> How was this discovered?
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> In the summer of 2014, LeeAnne Walters noticed that her son would get a rash every time he got into the swimming pool at their home in Flint, Michigan. By December that year, she had stopped letting any of her children drink the water coming out of her tap and called the city’s utility department to take a look. Walters had helped <http://michiganradio.org/post/mom-helped-uncover-what-was-really-going-flint-s-water#stream/0> to set in motion the discovery that the city’s water was seriously contaminated.
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> LeeAnne Walters shows water samples from her home. Photograph: Ryan Garza/AP
> The inspector’s reading of the Walter home found that the water contained lead levels at 104 parts per billion (ppb) – anything over 15 ppb is considered <http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm> unsafe by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). When they tested the water again in March 2015, they found it had lead levels of 397 ppb.
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> How did this happen?
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> The city previously bought its water from Detroit (where lead levels are 2.3 ppb <http://www.dwsd.org/downloads_n/customer_service/customer_information/water_quality_report.pdf>) but as of April 2014, it switched <http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2014/03/flint_residents_should_be_drin.html> its source to the Flint river to cut costs. The measure was always intended to be a short-term fix while city planners waited for a new pipeline from Detroit’s Lake Huron to be built. The water from the Flint river was highly corrosive <http://flintwaterstudy.org/2015/09/flint-rivers-water-is-very-corrosive-to-lead-and-causing-lead-contamination-in-homes/> and therefore damaged the lead pipes that it flowed through, but officials did not implement corrosion control to prevent lead from leaching into the water.
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> Almost immediately, citizens began to make complaints about the quality of their water. Since then, Virginia Tech and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality have together taken 271 samples <http://flintwaterstudy.org/2015/12/complete-dataset-lead-results-in-tap-water-for-271-flint-samples/>.
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> How bad is it in Flint?
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> The average reading was 11 ppb – over two times higher than the EPA guidelines.
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> Is that the highest reading?
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> No. The highest reading made by the Virginia Tech researchers observed lead levels of 13,000 ppb – anything above 5,000 ppb is deemed toxic or hazardous waste <http://flintwaterstudy.org/2015/08/hazardous-waste-levels-of-lead-found-in-a-flint-households-water/> by the EPA.
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> What are government guidelines?
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> The ideal level of lead in drinking water according to the EPA is “zero <http://www.epa.gov/your-drinking-water/table-regulated-drinking-water-contaminants>”. A 2012 report from the CDC explains why this is: “no measurable level of blood lead is known to be without deleterious effects, and because once engendered, the effects appear to be irreversible in the absence of any other interventions, public health, environmental and housing policies should encourage prevention of all exposure to lead.”
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> What are the health effects?
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> Long-term exposure for infants and children can lead to “delays in physical or mental development; children could show slight deficits in attention span and learning abilities”. The EPA also warns that adults might experience kidney problems or high blood pressure.
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> Have people in Flint been exposed?
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> Yes, it’s now assumed that children younger than 5 who live in Flint have been exposed – all 8,177 of them, according to records from the Census Bureau.
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> Is there any evidence children have been affected?
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> Yes. In September 2015, doctors from the Hurley Medical Center presented findings of a study about the effects on children younger than 5. The doctors analysed the blood of 840 children who had visited the medical center in 2013 and again in 2015 (i.e. before and after the change in the city’s water supply). They found that lead levels in the children’s blood had risen from 2.1% to 4.0% – a statistically significant rise. When they repeated these tests with children that weren’t from Flint, they didn’t notice the same increase over the same period.