A panel of experts gathered at Penn State Harrisburg recently to discuss the water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, its effects on residents, the health impacts of lead and public policy repercussions.
The discussion, hosted by the Penn State Harrisburg School of Science, Engineering, and Technology, featured Beverly Cigler, distinguished professor emerita of public policy and administration, Penn State Harrisburg; Rodney Nesmith, safe drinking water program manager, Southcentral Region, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection; Kandiah Sivarajah, state toxicologist, Pennsylvania Department of Health and adjunct professor of public health sciences, Penn State College of Medicine; and Yuefeng Xie, professor of environmental engineering, Penn State Harrisburg.
Summarizing media coverage of water crisis in Flint, Xie stressed why Flint is an important case study.
“We see Flint in the news, we see the demonstrations, and political debates,” he said. “Many other cities have similar issues with lead and exposure and financial crises. We cannot rely on the media to tell the story, I think it is important to have experts here to discuss the issue.”
How the Flint water crisis began
Nesmith explained that hard economic times forced Flint to seek an alternative water supplier. When that entity needed a year or so to be able to sell water to Flint, the city chose to use its own water source, a standby filter plant on the Flint River that had been rarely operated. This plant lacked corrosion controls which would have helped to prevent the river water from corroding old pipes causing lead and other chemicals to leach into the drinking water. Flint officials decided not to add such controls.
“The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) told Flint officials that they would have to protect against corrosion” and placed the city on six-month monitoring of the water system, a twice yearly sampling effort, Nesmith said.
“The first six months, there were no issues, or at least the public hadn’t become aware of them. The second six-month period, things began to snowball,” he said.
Residents reported issues with the taste, smell and color of their water. Children reportedly were developing unexplained rashes and other illnesses.
“Michigan DEQ required Flint to do additional evaluations, but before those evaluations were done, some customers did their own and found lead violations. . . . That’s when Virginia Tech University researchers became involved, which got public attention,” Nesmith said. According to CNN, the researchers declared the water unsafe for drinking or cooking. “Flint officials and the Michigan DEQ realized the mistake they had made,” Nesmith said.
The impact of lead in the water
The general public is exposed to lead through drinking water, Sivarajah said, as well as other sources: contaminated dust, soil, deteriorated lead-based paint (pre-1978), imported foods and beverages, products such as, cosmetics, jewelry, automotive batteries, computers, and toys; and activities such as mining, smelting, and other manufacturing processes.
Health effects related to lead exposure include blood issues, colic in children, elevated blood pressure, vision problems, neurological issues, and infertility. While adults and children are susceptible to health effects from lead exposure, children are more sensitive because of their developing brains, nervous system, and other organs, according to Sivarajah. He noted that children also absorb more ingested lead than adults. “Adults absorb 10 to 20 percent of lead, while children absorb 40 to 50 percent,” he said.
Framing the issue in Flint
Describing the Flint situation as “entirely avoidable,” Cigler said that mistakes were made “by everyone everywhere,” noting that Flint’s problem is a part of a larger infrastructure investment problem in the United States. “Water and sewer are major parts of infrastructure. Our investment has been lacking,” she said. “Overall, we need a trillion dollars to deal with our infrastructure problem.”
She added that many water and sewer systems are near the end of their life and the country’s investment in this area is at about 25 percent of 1977 levels. We have deferred investment in infrastructure to a point where it is a crisis, Cigler said.
Cigler cited lack of respect for the public as another lesson learned from the crisis. “When citizens and external groups were doing their studies, they were laughed at, scorned, and ignored. There was no respect whatsoever for the general public,” she said.
Another lesson learned from Flint, according to Cigler, is that “mitigation – preventing something in the first place – is always better than reacting to a crisis later.”
She added that the Flint case “shows that essential, effective government policies have to be in place to deal with health and welfare, as that is government’s main purpose, to protect health and safety.”
Cigler said the situation in Flint resulted from cutting government to the point where it didn’t have the capacity to function properly. “Instead of using this as a reason to distrust government, we should realize the importance of these life and death decisions that people in government make, and provide the adequate capacity and capability to deal with them,” Cigler said.