The Poisoned City

CHAPTER 5: ALCHEMY

. The recounting of LeeAnne Walters’s story relies, most especially, on her testimony in the 67th District Court on January 8, 2018, during the preliminary examinations in the criminal case against four MDEQ employees (Flint, Michigan, January 8, 2018); her testimony before the Michigan Joint Select Committee on the Flint Water Public Health Emergency (Lansing, Michigan, March 29, 2016); and her testimony before the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee (Washington, D.C., February 3, 2016). There are a number of magazines, radio broadcasts, documentaries, and newspapers that have covered all or part of her story as well. The Michigan Radio documentary “Not Safe to Drink,” and the ACLU documentaries Here’s to Flint and Corrosive Impact are important resources.
. Lindsey Smith, “Not Safe to Drink,” Michigan Radio, December 15, 2015.
. Besides LeeAnne Walters’s own testimony, numerous media accounts detail the symptoms of the Walters children. Among them: Sarah Hulett, “High Lead Levels in Michigan Kids After City Switches Water Source,” All Things Considered, NPR, September 29, 2015; Nancy Kaffer, “Lead Levels in Mich. City Have Moms Avoiding Tap Water,” Detroit Free Press/USA Today, October 6, 2015; Stephen Rodrick, “Who Poisoned Flint, Michigan?,” Rolling Stone, January 22, 2016; and Smith, “Not Safe to Drink.”
. Testimony of LeeAnne Walters in 67th District Court, Flint, Michigan, January 8, 2018.
. Rodrick, “Who Poisoned Flint, Michigan?”
. On Isaac Newton and alchemy, “Newton the Alchemist,” PBS NOVA. Interview with Bill Newman conducted September 6, 2005, posted online November 15, 2005; and Michael Greshko, “Isaac Newton’s Lost Alchemy Recipe Rediscovered,” National Geographic, April 4, 2016.
. Among the sources for the properties of lead, Lydia Denworth, Toxic Truth: A Scientist, a Doctor, and the Battle Over Lead (Boston: Beacon Press, 2008); Richard Rabin, “The Lead Industry and Lead Water Pipes ‘A MODEST CAMPAIGN,’” American Journal of Public Health 98, no. 9 (September 2008); and Elissa Nuñez and Amy Molloy, “Schools Fail Lead Tests While Many States Don’t Require Testing at All,” Center for Public Integrity, August 15, 2017.
. Elizabeth Klibanoff, “Lead Ammunition Poisons Wildlife but Too Expensive to Change, Hunters Say,” Morning Edition, NPR, February 20, 2017; and Jon M. Arnemo et al., “Health and Environmental Risks from Lead-Based Ammunition: Science Versus Sociology,” Ecohealth 13, no. 4 (2016).
. “Lead in Lipstick,” Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, n.d. http://www.safecosmetics.org/get-the-facts/regulations/us-laws/lead-in-lipstick/.
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 26.
. Ibid., pp. 61–62, 111; and “Poisoned Water,” NOVA, PBS, May 31, 2017.
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 26.
. As cited by the World Health Organization, “Lead Poisoning and Health,” updated August 2017, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs379/en/.
. “Lead: Learn About Lead,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, n.d., https://www.epa.gov/lead/learn-about-lead#exposure.
. As quoted in: Herbert L. Needleman, “The Neurobehavioral Effects of Low-Level Exposure to Lead in Childhood,” International Journal of Mental Health 14, no. 3 (Fall 2015).
. Paracelsus, who was apprenticed to a smelter as a child, wrote On the Miners’ Sickness and Other Miners’ Diseases in 1533 or 1534, though it wasn’t published until 1567, well after his death. The book is considered to be the first full-length treatment on occupational health. He describes a lung sickness for those working aboveground, processing the ores, and miners’ disease for those working belowground. While many of his conclusions were wrong, he described metal fumes as a cause of sickness. He’s not just talking about lead, but also mercury poisoning, respiratory diseases, and lung cancer. Paracelsus popularized the use of lead compounds as a therapeutic agent, based on the like-cures-like principle. As quoted by Jerome O. Nriagu: “Lead hath in it remedies for those diseases which be caused and bread in the miners leade.” Dan Fagin, Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation (New York: Bantam, 2013), pp. 26–30; Hugh D. Crone, Paracelsus: The Man Who Defied Medicine (Melbourne: Albarello Press, 2004), pp. 97–101; and Jerome O. Nriagu, “Saturnine Drugs and Medicinal Exposure to Lead: An Historical Outline,” in Herbert L. Needleman, ed., Human Lead Exposure (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 1991), pp. 3–22.
. As quoted in James Richard Farr, Artisans in Europe, 1300–1914 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 134–35.
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 29.
. Olga Khazan, “How Important Is Lead Poisoning to Becoming a Legendary Artist?,” Atlantic, November 25, 2013.
. William Finnegan, “Flint and the Long Struggle Against Lead Poisoning,” New Yorker, February 4, 2016.
. Benjamin Franklin, “To B. Vaughn, Esq.,” letter, Philadelphia, July 31, 1786. Reprinted in Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, LL.D. (London: British and Foreign Public Library, 1881). The particular quote here comes from p. 552.
. Sven Hernberg, “Lead Poisoning in a Historical Perspective” American Journal of Industrial Medicine 38 (2000), http://rachel.org/files/document/Lead_Poisoning_in_Historical_Perspective.pdf2000.
. Ibid.; and Marc Edwards, “Fetal Death and Reduced Birth Rates Associated with Exposure to Lead Contaminated Water,” Environmental Science & Technology 48, no. 1 (2014), https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es4034952.
. “All Change!,” Time, January 9, 1933, pp. 55, 85; and David Gartman, “Tough Guys and Pretty Boys: The Cultural Antagonisms of Engineering and Aesthetics in Automobile History,” Automobile in American Life and Society (University of Michigan–Dearborn and the Henry Ford, n.d.).
. According to U.S. Census data, in 1920, Flint’s population was 91,559, and it was 2 percent African American. In 1930, the population was 156,492, and it was 4 percent African American.
. This came out of the League of Nations’ Third International Labor Conference, which recommended not only that “white lead be prohibited entirely for paints for interiors” but that “women and children under 16 years of age be not employed where white lead was used in the manufacture of paint,” and that for outdoor paint, white lead should be no more than 2 percent of the formula. Between 1909 and 1934, the following countries banned or restricted white lead in interior paint: France, Belgium, Austria, Tunisia, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Spain, Yugoslavia, and Cuba. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (2002; repr. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 16.
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 52.
. David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, “‘A Gift of God’? The Public Health Controversy over Leaded Gasoline During the 1920s,” in William Lazonick, ed., American Corporate Economy: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management (New York: Routledge Press, 2002), pp. 86–92.
. Markowitz and Rosner, Deceit and Denial, p. 19.
. Rosner and Markowitz, “‘A Gift of God’?,” p. 88.
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 37.
. Ibid., p. 53; and Rosner and Markowitz, “‘A Gift of God’?,” p. 91.
. This was at a DuPont chemical plant in Deepwater, New Jersey. The three hundred cases of lead poisoning happened over two years. Much of the reporting that brought it to light was done by the New York Times. Markowitz and Rosner, Deceit and Denial, p. 25.
. Ibid., p. 89.
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 58.
. Ibid., p. 54.
. Rosner and Markowitz, “‘A Gift of God’?,” pp. 84–85.
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 54.
. A wonderful history of how this field developed is told in Fagin’s Toms River. On its particular challenges: “Trying to determine the environmental trigger of a slow-developing disease was like trying to identify a criminal based on a smudged fingerprint left at the scene of a crime: It required a subjective interpretation of an indistinct impression left behind long after the perpetrator had fled … This was the central dilemma of epidemiology, a term coined in the mid-nineteenth century for the study of factors influencing health and disease across populations. Identifying an exposure that appeared to increase the risk of disease in a particular population—whether neuropathy among Venetian artisans or bladder cancer among German dye workers—but what did it prove? It did not prove that the chemical caused any particular case of the disease, since there were probably other potential causes, too. It did not even prove that the apparent link between chemical and disease was important and not a coincidental distraction from the still-hidden true cause. It did not prove anything at all. This inherent uncertainty would take on extra significance as the age of industrial chemistry dawned. With the rise of large-scale manufacturing, the outcomes of environmental health debates could affect the economies of entire nations” (pp. 63–64).
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 54.
. Richard Rabin, “The Lead Industry and Lead Water Pipes ‘A MODEST CAMPAIGN,’” American Journal of Public Health 98, no. 9 (September 2008).
. Herbert L. Needleman, “History of Lead Poisoning in the World,” n.d., collected as part of Get the Lead Out, a campaign from the Center for Biological Diversity, http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/get_the_lead_out/pdfs/health/Needleman_1999.pdf.
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 59.
. Ibid., p. 64; and Needleman, “History of Lead Poisoning in the World.”
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 55.
. Jerome O. Nriagu, “The Rise and Fall of Leaded Gasoline,” Science of the Total Environment 92 (1990), http://www.columbia.edu/itc/sipa/envp/louchouarn/courses/env-chem/Pb-Rise&Fall(Nriagu1990).pdf.
. Other cities banned them, such as Milwaukee in 1962. (Nonetheless, lead pipes remain in use in Milwaukee, and, especially with the patchy records of their location, it’s a serious point of contention.) In her written testimony to Congress, dated March 5, 2004, Professor Ellen Silbergeld noted that people have long observed how lead exposure through drinking water can be toxic for human health, especially infants. “In a landmark paper in 1967, Sir Abraham Goldberg and his colleagues traced the etiology of a cluster of mentally retarded children in Glasgow to the storage of drinking water in lead-lined tanks (Gibson et al., 1967). Shannon and Graef (1989) reported the case of an infant poisoned by drinking water with a lead concentration of 130 ppb.”
. Rabin, “The Lead Industry and Lead Water Pipes.”
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 83.
. Matt Pearce, “A Brief History of How the American Public Was Sold on Toxic Lead,” Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2016.
. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, “‘Cater to the Children’: The Role of the Lead Industry in a Public Health Tragedy, 1900–1955,” American Journal of Public Health 90, no. 1 (January 2000), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446124/pdf/10630135.pdf.
. Ibid.
. Poor people are also less likely to have adequate health insurance, or any insurance at all, which would help mitigate some of the symptoms of lead exposure. Likewise when it comes to access to fresh, healthy foods. However, as Yanna Lambrinidou has pointed out, it’s important to note that many factors can cause lead contamination in water; deteriorating infrastructure is one of them, but with the prevalence of lead pipes and plumbing fixtures it’s certainly not the sole cause. “I would liken lead in water more to lead in gasoline (before it was banned). Both invisible, both prevalent, no matter what kind of life one lives/lived” (Yanna Lambrinidou, written comments to the author, February 16, 2018).
. For this and the paragraph that precedes it, Denworth, Toxic Truth, pp. 23–28.
. Jennifer Crooks sent the initial email in this thread on February 26, 2015, to Stephen Busch, Mike Prysby, and Adam Rosenthal at the MDEQ, and to Thomas Poy and Miguel Del Toral at the EPA, with the subject line: “HIGH LEAD: FLINT Water testing Results.” The thread, first revealed through an open records request by Curt Guyette at the ACLU of Michigan, is collected in an (edited) pdf by the Flint Water Study team at Virginia Tech, http://flintwaterstudy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/MDEQ-USEPA-Final.pdf.
. Email sent on February 27, 2015, to all of the recipients on the thread, plus the MDEQ’s Richard Benzie and Liane Shekter-Smith. “Thank you for this information, we will take it under consideration,” Stephen Busch responded. He made a bullet-point list about the state of Flint’s water system. One item was “Has an Optimized Corrosion Control Program.”
. It’s not a precise overlap of the neighborhood, but to get a greater sense of the area, see “A Vision for Thread Lake & Adjoining Neighborhoods in the City of Flint, Michigan,” a report prepared by the Planning & Zoning Center at Michigan State University in partnership with the Flint River Watershed Coalition, https://www.canr.msu.edu/uploads/375/65824/VisionThreadLakeAdjoiningNeighborhoods_LPIPZC_FINAL_June2014.pdf. Some details about the house have been drawn from its Zillow listing, last accessed April 10, 2018.
. Nearly all of the information here and in the following paragraph comes from testimony by LeeAnne Walters in 67th District Court, Flint, Michigan, January 8, 2018, including details from a cell phone video of the garden hose hookup.
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 92.
. “EPA Takes Final Step in Phaseout of Leaded Gasoline,” press release, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, January 29, 1996, https://archive.epa.gov/epa/aboutepa/epa-takes-final-step-phaseout-leaded-gasoline.html.
. “Safe Drinking Water Act 1986 Amendments,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” https://tinyurl.com/yd4pq38k.
. This is per Yanna Lambrinidou, medical anthropologist and leading advocate in the D.C. lead-in-water crisis, in a phone interview with the author, November 2, 2017, and also in Lambrinidou’s lecture at the Dow Sustainability Fellows Symposium at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, November 18, 2017.
. Ten percent of homes would have to surpass 15 ppb before it triggered a series of requirements. (When utilities report tests, they often refer to the “90th percentile,” meaning 90 percent of sampled homes.) So, by the time the action level is exceeded, the lead problem is fairly widespread. Of course, it’s a good thing when a jurisdiction’s numbers are safely within the legal limits, but many anti-lead advocates point out that, even assuming the tests are done properly, the 90th percentile numbers don’t guarantee that lead won’t be released in any individual’s water at any time. Yanna Lambrinidou, written comments to the author, February 16, 2018.
. Denworth, Toxic Truth, p. 82.
. The update is in Section 1417 of the Safe Drinking Water Act, approved by Congress on January 4, 2011. Note that there are still a number of “lead free” exemptions.
. Elin Betanzo (hydraulic engineer), interview with the author, Detroit, Mich., June 20, 2017. The D.C. water system switched to chloramines in November 2000, and research suggested that brass, in particular, was much more susceptible to lead leaching. Marc Edwards and Abhijeet Dudi, “Role of Chlorine and Chloramine in Corrosion of Lead-bearing Plumbing Materials,” AWWA Journal 96, no. 10 (October 2004).
. “The Army Corps of Engineers, which controls the Washington Aqueduct used by the District of Columbia’s Water and Sewer Authority (WASA), began to use chloramine in November of 2000. This change increased lead corrosion inside the D.C. drinking water system and resulted in elevated water lead levels (WLLS). WASA did not notify the public until 2003, but the notices were unclear and announced meetings to ‘discuss and solicit public comments on WASA’s Safe Drinking Water Act projects.’ As a result, thousands of unwitting D.C. residents and their children were exposed for two years to harmful levels of lead from the water they were drinking and using for cooking and infant formulas.… On Saturday, January 31, 2004, a front-page story in the Washington Post told the public for the first time that water tests conducted the previous summer by WASA found that thousands of D.C. homes—two-thirds of those tested—had tap water lead levels above the EPA limit of 15 ppb.” U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Science and Technology. “A Public Health Tragedy: How Flawed CDC Data and Faulty Assumptions Endangered Children’s Health in the Nation’s Capital.” Washington, D.C., 2007, p. 6, http://cdm16064.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p266901coll4/id/2443.
. David LaFrance, “Together, Let’s Get the Lead Out,” AWWA Connections, American Water Works Association, March 15, 2016. LaFrance, the CEO of the AWWA, cites a March 10, 2016, survey by the association that suggests there are about 6.1 million lead service lines across the country. His total price tag is based on an estimate that it would cost about $5,000 to replace each one. For the EPA’s number, “Lead and Copper Rule Revisions White Paper,” Office of Water, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, October 2016. (Note that this was released in a key month for the Flint water crisis.) On p. 9, the EPA report says that the cost of lead service line replacements ranges between $2,500 and $8,000, “suggesting an estimated cost of eliminating all 6.5 to 10 million” lines nationwide will require spending “16 to 80 billion dollars.” It adds that the expense would be borne disproportionately by “specific low-income localities, such as Detroit,” which has 100,000 lead lines and has a large percentage of residents living below the poverty line. Also, committing to zero-tolerance would require the elimination of lead from plumbing fixtures, both old and new. Brass fixtures, for example, can leach lead. Yanna Lambrinidou, written comments to the author, February 16, 2018.
. Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. 6.
. “Joint Release from DEP and Newark Public Schools on Temporary Use of Alternate Water Sources After Elevated Levels of Lead Found in Recent District Sampling,” New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, March 9, 2016.
. Elissa Nuñez and Amy Molloy, “Schools Fail Lead Tests While Many States Don’t Require Testing at All,” Center for Public Integrity, August 15, 2017.
. Carol D. Leonnig, Jo Becker, and David Nakamura, “Lead Levels in Water Misrepresented Across U.S.,” Washington Post, October 5, 2004, p. A1.
. Erik Olson and Kristi Pullen Fedinick, “What’s in Your Water? Flint and Beyond,” Natural Resources Defense Council, June 2016.
. That’s according to the CDC’s information page about lead (https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/). It includes only children ages one through five who have more than 5 ug/dL of lead in their blood.
. Markowitz and Rosner, Lead Wars, p. 7.
. Yanna Lambrinidou, written comments to the author, February 16, 2017.