High blood lead levels in children in Flint, Michigan were obscured in part because of an outdated method of studying public health – the ZIP code. Here’s why we need to make use of a better way.
A big data analysis indicates the focus on service line replacement may only go so far at fixing Flint’s water issues.
George Thomas/flickr
By tapping into diverse data sources in Flint, researchers can predict vulnerable homes and even have found that home water service lines may not be the biggest contributor to lead poisoning.
A troubled town.
Michigan Municipal Leage via Flickr
The Flint water crisis has left people across the country wondering if lead poisoning is a problem in their community. But it’s very hard to find out how widespread this problem is.
Virginia Tech students process water samples from homes in Flint.
Flint Water Study/Facebook
Virginia Tech University engineering students blew the whistle on Flint, Michigan’s toxic drinking water. Hailed as heroes, they’ve also learned that it isn’t easy to do science for the public good.
Flaking lead paint in a home in Muncie, Indiana.
Shelly/Flickr
How did lead poisoning become a persistent threat in U.S. cities? Lead paint and slumlords played key roles, but so did postwar housing policies that trapped minorities in crumbling inner cities.
Lead can linger in bones.
X-ray via www.shutterstock.com.
Lead might not be in paint or gasoline anymore, but since it doesn’t break down in the home or the environment it remains a problem throughout the U.S.
Lead exposure is more common than you think.
CDC/Dawn Arlotta
Treating municipal water, particularly from rivers, is difficult technically and cash-strapped municipalities like Flint don’t always know the latest science.
The University of Michigan-Flint puts experts from academia in the same room as Flint community members, an innovative model for educating the community and forming the public health response.
Flint, Michigan residents couldn’t get answers about their water – so they did their own research.
Laura Nawrocik
A new model of citizen-led science is emerging – as in the case of Flint, Michigan’s poisoned water. Rather than simply supporting scientists, citizens ask their own questions and set the research agenda.
Up until the 1940s, as much as half of U.S. water piping from main lines was made of lead.
Thomashawk/flickr
Chris Sellers, Stony Brook University (The State University of New York)
A wake-up call from Flint: the U.S. has made great gains in reducing lead exposure, but the country is still saddled with millions of miles of water-carrying lead pipes.
Tap water in Flint’s hospital on October 16.
Joyca Zhu/Flint Water Study
If Flint, Michigan were an affluent suburb, would residents have been exposed as long to drinking toxic water? Pioneering scholar Robert Bullard calls Flint’s crisis a classic case of environmental discrimination
Pregnant women in three Australian cities are not told that lead exposure during pregnancy is linked to miscarriage and early delivery.
Flickr/Luca Montanari
Parents in three Australian states are being given misleading advice about the dangers of lead to babies and small children – including failing to warn pregnant women about miscarriage risks.
Reducing lead exposure has health, social and economic benefits.
rSnapshotPhotos/Shutterstock
Despite the environment being, according to the Olympic Charter, the “third dimension of Olympism”, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has yet to act on the enormous tonnage of lead shot scattered…