Lead may be the biggest childhood epidemic in the U.S.
Cases of bottled water are still being delivered to Flint, Michigan, but the lead problem in America doesn't stop there. Houses across the country have lead in the walls, and we've known about the damaging effects for a long time. David Rosner is the author of "Lead Wars," and also a professor of the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University.
On the industrial use of lead:
It’s
basically a product that was useful throughout the 20th century and
unfortunately was understood to be a major industrial problem both in
the 19th and early 20th centuries for industrial workers and then was
identified as a childhood poison, that literally caused neurological
problems among children in the 19-teens and 1920s in this country.
On lead in homes:
Certainly
right now, the walls of the nation are the most serious hazard for
housing that was built between 1920 and 1970 or so. All of those walls
probably have lead. If we identified houses where children were living
or where young couples were moving in planning to have kids, we probably
could handle it fairly systematically but the problem is there are
enormous costs. We have to make decisions about whether the financial
cost is worth the cost to our children’s lives.
Flint Water Crisis: Shameful And Deadly
“Poisoned
water full of lead, Legionnaire's and coliform bacteria and who knows
what other contaminate is living in it. Bad water. Smelly, discolored,
bad tasting, certainly not pure.”
Mr.
Woodson recalls advisories to boil water to make it safe, a GM plant
that stopped using Flint water because it rusted parts, alongside 18
months of residents suffering rashes, hair loss, anemia, death from
Legionnaire’s disease and lead poisoning and abject failures by the
governor and state agencies.
