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If I understood the article, what Kristof is saying, is that as bad as Flint appears to be for children, there are a lot of places as bad, or worse, that are ge

If I understood the article, what Kristof is saying, is that as bad as Flint appears to be for children, there are a lot of places as bad, or worse, that are getting no press at all. Testing for elevated level of lead in children: o Flint - 4.9% o New York State (outside of NYC): 6.7% o Pennsylvania: 8.5% o Westside Detroit: 20% o Iowa: 32% If these figures are true (and one hopes that the NYT fact checked these numbers), and are comparable, it seems like what's happening in Flint is just the tip of the iceberg.

biot 11y ago
As the article states: “Lead in Flint is the tip of the iceberg,” notes Dr. Richard J. Jackson, former director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
ascorbic 11y ago
He does caution that the figures may not be comparable. I don't know the details of the figures, but I can imagine they normally only test children who have been found to be exposed, so you'd expect higher rates. In Flint they've tested more widely, though of course exposure is wider too.
merpnderp 11y ago
Given that the EPA wasn't going to warn anyone until the issue was outed by a private individual doing research on their own, we probably have no good idea how bad it is....but the EPA probably does.
morgante 11y ago
I have a really hard time believing these figures, if only because it would essentially render Flint a non-issue. 32% of Iowan children being poisoned would be what we'd all be hearing about (if only because it might be a convenient primary issue).
- Manishearth 11y ago
  IIRC lead is only part of the issue in Flint, the water is otherwise undrinkable, too (very dirty or something). (It's also the direct way in which it happened that makes Flint an issue; most of these other high-lead situations cannot be pinpointed to a single instance of negligence/corruption. Flint can.)
- Mvandenbergh 11y ago
  Those percentages are the number of tested children with elevated levels, the article doesn't say anything about how elevated the levels are. If 32% of the children in Iowa have mildly elevated levels but very few have highly elevated levels then it might not cause much of a health impact.
madaxe_again 11y ago
While this is indeed pretty dire, it's worth bearing in mind that the entire generation who are currently running the world suffer from lead poisoning to one degree or another - atmospheric lead from gasoline additives was a major source of lead in humans until lead was withdrawn from petroleum. Add that to most paints being lead based until the last quarter of the 20th century, and you have an entire generation of brain damage. The western roman empire quite likely degraded in part due to its leadership being brain damaged by lead - they added lead acetate to wine as a sweetener, and lined watercourses with lead regularly - although the former was a far greater source. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/win... for some reference. In any case, a huge chunk of the world's population has heavy metal poisoning, be it mercury, lead, cadmium, or all of the above - and it's largely being ignored, and things like Flint are almost unhelpful, as it makes this look like a localised problem, when it's actually global.
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  Absolutely. Not only is the problem global, but everybody generally acknowledges that there is a problem. Some context is direly needed here, and the story isn't that it's much worse than we thought. We already knew it was bad; that's why Flint is able to be a story. There's a discussion to be had another day about what's "good enough" -- after all, we want to be healthy, not create a water system so pure that it's never ever existed in human history before. For now, though, the overall story worldwide is positive. We know about metal poisoning, we're able to measure it, and we have instantaneous publishing ability to share with the world what various people are drinking. That's all good news. In addition, water quality overall continues to get better. Nobody's making excuses for Flint, but good grief. This is a happy story. People who were suffering will not be in the future. Problems are being identified which we are able to fix. Sometimes I think the pattern of these stories is so established in some people's minds that they're forced to follow the pattern no matter what, over and over again. A little context here won't fix Flint, but it might give a more balanced view on just where we're at globally.
- herge 11y ago
  > The western roman empire quite likely degraded in part due to its leadership being brain damaged by lead FWIW, modern historians don't believe that. See https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23o92d/on_cosmos_neil_degrassetyson_said_some_historians/cgyxmj3 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23o92d/on_co... for a rundown of the modern scholarship on the question, including a breakdown of Nriagu's arguments.
vmarsy 11y ago
Notice that these percentage are the percentage of children with "elevated lead"., I'm making up numbers here but If we consider elevated to be anything more than X ug/L . first of all how was this X chosen? Secondly, if 6.7% of NY state children have (X + 0.01), this would be very different from 4.9% of children who have let's say ( X * 3 )

biot 11y ago

As the article states: “Lead in Flint is the tip of the iceberg,” notes Dr. Richard J. Jackson, former director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

ascorbic 11y ago

He does caution that the figures may not be comparable. I don't know the details of the figures, but I can imagine they normally only test children who have been found to be exposed, so you'd expect higher rates. In Flint they've tested more widely, though of course exposure is wider too.

merpnderp 11y ago

Given that the EPA wasn't going to warn anyone until the issue was outed by a private individual doing research on their own, we probably have no good idea how bad it is....but the EPA probably does.

morgante 11y ago

I have a really hard time believing these figures, if only because it would essentially render Flint a non-issue. 32% of Iowan children being poisoned would be what we'd all be hearing about (if only because it might be a convenient primary issue).

Manishearth 11y ago
IIRC lead is only part of the issue in Flint, the water is otherwise undrinkable, too (very dirty or something). (It's also the direct way in which it happened that makes Flint an issue; most of these other high-lead situations cannot be pinpointed to a single instance of negligence/corruption. Flint can.)
Mvandenbergh 11y ago
Those percentages are the number of tested children with elevated levels, the article doesn't say anything about how elevated the levels are. If 32% of the children in Iowa have mildly elevated levels but very few have highly elevated levels then it might not cause much of a health impact.

madaxe_again 11y ago

While this is indeed pretty dire, it's worth bearing in mind that the entire generation who are currently running the world suffer from lead poisoning to one degree or another - atmospheric lead from gasoline additives was a major source of lead in humans until lead was withdrawn from petroleum. Add that to most paints being lead based until the last quarter of the 20th century, and you have an entire generation of brain damage. The western roman empire quite likely degraded in part due to its leadership being brain damaged by lead - they added lead acetate to wine as a sweetener, and lined watercourses with lead regularly - although the former was a far greater source. http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/wine/leadpoisoning.html http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/win... for some reference. In any case, a huge chunk of the world's population has heavy metal poisoning, be it mercury, lead, cadmium, or all of the above - and it's largely being ignored, and things like Flint are almost unhelpful, as it makes this look like a localised problem, when it's actually global.

DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Absolutely. Not only is the problem global, but everybody generally acknowledges that there is a problem. Some context is direly needed here, and the story isn't that it's much worse than we thought. We already knew it was bad; that's why Flint is able to be a story. There's a discussion to be had another day about what's "good enough" -- after all, we want to be healthy, not create a water system so pure that it's never ever existed in human history before. For now, though, the overall story worldwide is positive. We know about metal poisoning, we're able to measure it, and we have instantaneous publishing ability to share with the world what various people are drinking. That's all good news. In addition, water quality overall continues to get better. Nobody's making excuses for Flint, but good grief. This is a happy story. People who were suffering will not be in the future. Problems are being identified which we are able to fix. Sometimes I think the pattern of these stories is so established in some people's minds that they're forced to follow the pattern no matter what, over and over again. A little context here won't fix Flint, but it might give a more balanced view on just where we're at globally.
herge 11y ago
> The western roman empire quite likely degraded in part due to its leadership being brain damaged by lead FWIW, modern historians don't believe that. See https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23o92d/on_cosmos_neil_degrassetyson_said_some_historians/cgyxmj3 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/23o92d/on_co... for a rundown of the modern scholarship on the question, including a breakdown of Nriagu's arguments.

vmarsy 11y ago

Notice that these percentage are the percentage of children with "elevated lead"., I'm making up numbers here but If we consider elevated to be anything more than X ug/L . first of all how was this X chosen? Secondly, if 6.7% of NY state children have (X + 0.01), this would be very different from 4.9% of children who have let's say ( X * 3 )