6 ms·

Thousands of U.S. locales where lead poisoning is worse than in Flint

188 points by imagination 10y ago

anigbrowl 10y ago
Instead, Reuters sought testing data at the neighborhood level, in census tracts or zip code areas, submitting records requests to all 50 states. Too bed there's no way to study the dataset directly short of repeating the process.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  I'll pay for and perform the FOIA requests through muckrock.com if you do the analysis.
  - lettergram 10y ago
    Here is my experience FOIA requesting 100+ universities: http://austingwalters.com/foia-requesting-100-universities/ http://austingwalters.com/foia-requesting-100-universities/ In short, you often have to get on the phone, email, snail mail, go in person, and pay quite a bit to get records. It's a very painful process. Careful what you offer lol
    - walrus01 10y ago
      summary of the new star wars movie: the tale of an extremely complicated and costly FOIA request
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - pryelluw 10y ago
        This is the best star wars joke Ive read in a long time. Brilliant. :D
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    I'm not sure I'm competent to do that, but this isn't the first time we've had this sort of conversation. Maybe you could drop me a line at gmail outlining your interest.
- tlb 10y ago
  Have you tried asking the reporters named in the byline?
kem 10y ago
Aside from the disturbing levels of lead poisoning in some locations, this also reveals how little is publicly knowable about lead levels in some areas. It really paints a picture of widespread problems and obstructions to shining a light on them.
toodlebunions 10y ago
Will they get the same attention? Will the nation ever upgrade and repair ancient and disastrous infrastructure?
- bmj 10y ago
  In my area (Western PA), the water authority is working to replace lead service lines, but only to the curb. Unfortunately, it is up to the homeowner to replace the line from the curb to the house. This is quite expensive, and depending on the topography, requires a significant amount of digging. This is not an excuse, but I think it's important to point out in some cases, the issues with lead are on private property, and some municipalities just can't afford to fix everything.
  - olegkikin 10y ago
    Wait, what? They have actual lead pipes for drinking water? That's insane.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      It's safe as long as the water chemistry doesn't leach the pipes. If it does, and you're not using agents in the water to stop it, you get Flint, MI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis "The Flint water crisis is a drinking water contamination issue in Flint, Michigan, United States that started in April 2014. After Flint changed its water source from treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water (which was sourced from Lake Huron as well as the Detroit River) to the Flint River (to which officials had failed to apply corrosion inhibitors), its drinking water had a series of problems that culminated with lead contamination, creating a serious public health danger. The Flint River water that was treated improperly caused lead from aging pipes to leach into the water supply, causing extremely elevated levels of the heavy metal neurotoxin."
      - seanp2k2 10y ago
        Is anyone else not totally cool with showering and drinking water with flouride, chlorine, and inhibitor chemicals? APEC Water makes a great counter-top tankless RO filtration system for $200 that takes 10 mins to install and doesn't require any permanent mounting (so it's fine to use in apartments). The only downside is that unlike filter taps with a reservoir tank, you only get the RO membrane rate of flow (~2GPH depending on your water pressure) so you kinda need to fill up a jug and keep it in the fridge, otherwise an 8oz glass of water takes about a minute to fill.
zaroth 10y ago
So Reuters is finally getting around to doing their job; moving beyond a sensationalized story which sells ads, to the unglamorous work of uncovering the truth, that Flint isn't special at all and that the government knew that and has been covering it up. It's a shame they couldn't get around to reporting the truth behind the sensation a year ago when public outcry was enough to get substantial Federal funding allocated to fixing this nation-wide. First there should be a Federal law requiring disclosure of testing data nationwide, and the full sets should be put online in standardized formats. Childhood lead rates should be shown next to walkability score and crime stats on Realtor sites. Home sellers should be mandated to report their local area exposure rates at the time of sale. Second, setup a super-fund type cash pool which provides for remediation of the top X% of effected areas. Third, new laws for mandatory testing and reporting, and fines and felonies for underreporting, misreporting, or falsifying reports of childhood lead exposure. Here's to hoping that major infrastructure spending includes the unglamorous water mains replacements as much as the more glamorous monument-style projects.
- eric_h 10y ago
  I wonder to what extent Michael Moore's Flint pedigree influenced the media. I'm guessing it's decidedly non-zero. Edit: this was not intended as a dig at Michael Moore or anyone else. The fact that he made a documentary featuring Flint means that more people than otherwise should be are aware of the place, hence, media stories about it are more likely to gain traction with the general population. Michael Moore humanized Flint. His making it recognizeable, I think, aided in the rise of this particular story, IMO. I also think the name of the city helped its presence in the news cycle. Flint, being short and a homonym for another English word is far more memorable than say "Scarborough" (which, amusingly, was the first name that came to mind when I tried to come up with the most memorable unmemorable name for a town.)
  - mturmon 10y ago
    The problem is, this kind of speculation really goes nowhere. It's unprovable. And, even if there was a connection between peripheral awareness of Flint due to Moore and the legs this story has...so what?
thesimpsons1022 10y ago
and these same people vote in people that shut down the epa and do everything possible to poison their children. let them get what they asked for.
- intransigent 10y ago
  Consider the possibility that lead poisoning inflicts just the type of mental disabilities that would lead a person to vote in such a fashion to begin with. With that in mind, is this really how you feel?
- mikestew 10y ago
  and these same people You know better than that, or rather, you know that you don't know that. Hard enough to get the water quality data, apparently, let alone join that to voter records.
- dang 10y ago
  Posting like this here will get your account banned, so please don't do it again. Instead, please post civilly and substantively or not at all. Also, please don't use HN for ideological or political battle. That's not what this site is for. It's good to (re)-read the following to get an idea of the kind of discussion we're hoping for here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
sytelus 10y ago
I went to my water utility's website to find out their numbers. First I was shocked that they publish their numbers only once a year! And even in that report they say last lead measurement was in 2013 because Department of Health only requites measurement every 3 years! With Trump about to set loose entire Oil, gas and fracking industry like never before this might get lot worse.
JauntTrooper 10y ago
This is a public health disaster. It's tough to really fathom the number of children across the country that will suffer mental and behavioral problems for life because of this. Why are there not more lawsuits? Is the scope of the damage too difficult to quantify, or the negligent parties too diffuse/remote to sue? As much as our litigation-based culture is vilified, it can help spur action by changing the cost/benefit of doing nothing and force companies/governments to step up and fix this before more people are hurt. The risk of Mesothelioma lawsuits, for example, help add some seriousness to asbestos exposure claims.
- nerdponx 10y ago
  Too diffuse. This is a classic "principal-agent" problem.
- ianai 10y ago
  I'd bet that's down the road. Only recently has testing your water for lead/etc become cheap, easy, and relevant. If you tested your water for lead 10 years ago society would probably label you paranoid - still might in many places.
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    > If you tested your water for lead 10 years ago society would probably label you paranoid New York City sends you a free lead test kit, if you ask for it [1]. [1] http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/1266/water-lead-test-kit-request http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/1266/water-lead-te...
- h4nkoslo 10y ago
  There are a shitload of lawsuits, whenever a plausible plaintiff can be found.
  - RawData 10y ago
    Yeah but who do you sue if the old flaky paint in the house you own causes your kid to get lead poisoning?
tn13 10y ago
It is hard to sue government. It is even harder to make them lose their jobs. When it comes to compensation they will simply use our own money to pay back. Utilities remains a major pain in USA partly because of the ridiculous government control which invariably leads to corruption. I have been exclusively using distilled water in Sunnyvale for last 3 years. Water in Sunnyvale has dangerous levels of pesticides if not lead.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  I don't see any reason to think totally privatizing and deregulating utilities would be any safer.
  - mdpopescu 10y ago
    Here's one: companies like repeat customers.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      lol. Yeah, it works great for broadband. What are you going to do, shut off the water? Or will multiple companies be building out competing water infrastructure? Let's be realistic here.
    - Tempest1981 10y ago
      Remember PG&E and the San Bruno fire? Companies fight hard to deny liability when they harm their customers. There is no competition in many cases. http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/07/27/san-bruno-blast-pge-criminal-case-goes-to-the-jury/ http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/07/27/san-bruno-blast-pge-cr...
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        Assuming you can even figure out you're being slowly poisoned.
hkmurakami 10y ago
It looks like California is relatively clean on this scale, but what about the Superfund sites? I feel like those are gray areas that get much less attention than I would expect. With former semiconductor fab sites and former military sites getting increasingly developed with sometimes only a few feet of topsoil removed for cleanup (plus some kind of shielding material?), and a seeming lack of hard data for long term health impact, count me among the concerned. (happy to have my worries put to rest by HN'ers!)
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Yeah, can't wait for them to try bringing manufacturing back to America. Hopefully California will shut anything like that down.
  - neohaven 10y ago
    Because having it elsewhere is better? Here we'd have the resources to hopefully make it safe(r). China doesn't give a damn about the environment.
bananash 10y ago
i tried to tell people vaccines are little ufos that cause breast cancer and vagina cancer and testicle cancer its very scary how many disease-rate graphs go straight up since the vaccine rate was 7x'd in 1975: abortion, miscarriage, retardation, autism, deformity, vagina cancer, prostate cancer, testicular cancer, lower sperm count, breast cancer, adhd, chrons, asperbergers, spinal diseases, learning disability, parkinsons and dementia, als, alzheimers, various other learning disabilities deformities and abnormalitys searching for a catalyst: and vaccine rate further 4x'ed in 1980, and 4x'ed in 1990, and 4x'ed in 2000 they still just laugh and say shit like that cant happen, and im making it up (article on it forth coming, with ~25 graphs) the data was removed from reddit, hackernews, and 4chan, without reason
ap22213 10y ago
I remember reading years ago about how water utilities were replacing chlorine with chloramine because it was cheaper. From what I understand, chloramine is more corrosive and it erodes the lining in the lead pipes. Does anyone know if it's standard practice for water companies to do their quality sampling at the taps?
randomnumber314 10y ago
I put together a search engine[1] for this very thing a few months ago. The data is publicly available, but obscure and usually buried in poorly described .gov city pages. [1]http://bit.ly/2h5yGNg http://bit.ly/2h5yGNg
tboyd47 10y ago
When it comes to testing your water, some counties offer home testing services to concerned residents for free. I urge everybody with kids or thinking of having them to check your local county government's website for information. Even if the water treatment facility in your area is free of lead, the pipes in your home or neighborhood might not be.

188 points by imagination 10y ago

Instead, Reuters sought testing data at the neighborhood level, in census tracts or zip code areas, submitting records requests to all 50 states. Too bed there's no way to study the dataset directly short of repeating the process.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
I'll pay for and perform the FOIA requests through muckrock.com if you do the analysis.
- lettergram 10y ago
  Here is my experience FOIA requesting 100+ universities: http://austingwalters.com/foia-requesting-100-universities/ http://austingwalters.com/foia-requesting-100-universities/ In short, you often have to get on the phone, email, snail mail, go in person, and pay quite a bit to get records. It's a very painful process. Careful what you offer lol
  - walrus01 10y ago
    summary of the new star wars movie: the tale of an extremely complicated and costly FOIA request
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - pryelluw 10y ago
      This is the best star wars joke Ive read in a long time. Brilliant. :D
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  I'm not sure I'm competent to do that, but this isn't the first time we've had this sort of conversation. Maybe you could drop me a line at gmail outlining your interest.
tlb 10y ago
Have you tried asking the reporters named in the byline?

kem 10y ago

Aside from the disturbing levels of lead poisoning in some locations, this also reveals how little is publicly knowable about lead levels in some areas. It really paints a picture of widespread problems and obstructions to shining a light on them.

toodlebunions 10y ago

Will they get the same attention? Will the nation ever upgrade and repair ancient and disastrous infrastructure?

bmj 10y ago
In my area (Western PA), the water authority is working to replace lead service lines, but only to the curb. Unfortunately, it is up to the homeowner to replace the line from the curb to the house. This is quite expensive, and depending on the topography, requires a significant amount of digging. This is not an excuse, but I think it's important to point out in some cases, the issues with lead are on private property, and some municipalities just can't afford to fix everything.
- olegkikin 10y ago
  Wait, what? They have actual lead pipes for drinking water? That's insane.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    It's safe as long as the water chemistry doesn't leach the pipes. If it does, and you're not using agents in the water to stop it, you get Flint, MI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis "The Flint water crisis is a drinking water contamination issue in Flint, Michigan, United States that started in April 2014. After Flint changed its water source from treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water (which was sourced from Lake Huron as well as the Detroit River) to the Flint River (to which officials had failed to apply corrosion inhibitors), its drinking water had a series of problems that culminated with lead contamination, creating a serious public health danger. The Flint River water that was treated improperly caused lead from aging pipes to leach into the water supply, causing extremely elevated levels of the heavy metal neurotoxin."
    - seanp2k2 10y ago
      Is anyone else not totally cool with showering and drinking water with flouride, chlorine, and inhibitor chemicals? APEC Water makes a great counter-top tankless RO filtration system for $200 that takes 10 mins to install and doesn't require any permanent mounting (so it's fine to use in apartments). The only downside is that unlike filter taps with a reservoir tank, you only get the RO membrane rate of flow (~2GPH depending on your water pressure) so you kinda need to fill up a jug and keep it in the fridge, otherwise an 8oz glass of water takes about a minute to fill.

zaroth 10y ago

So Reuters is finally getting around to doing their job; moving beyond a sensationalized story which sells ads, to the unglamorous work of uncovering the truth, that Flint isn't special at all and that the government knew that and has been covering it up. It's a shame they couldn't get around to reporting the truth behind the sensation a year ago when public outcry was enough to get substantial Federal funding allocated to fixing this nation-wide. First there should be a Federal law requiring disclosure of testing data nationwide, and the full sets should be put online in standardized formats. Childhood lead rates should be shown next to walkability score and crime stats on Realtor sites. Home sellers should be mandated to report their local area exposure rates at the time of sale. Second, setup a super-fund type cash pool which provides for remediation of the top X% of effected areas. Third, new laws for mandatory testing and reporting, and fines and felonies for underreporting, misreporting, or falsifying reports of childhood lead exposure. Here's to hoping that major infrastructure spending includes the unglamorous water mains replacements as much as the more glamorous monument-style projects.

eric_h 10y ago
I wonder to what extent Michael Moore's Flint pedigree influenced the media. I'm guessing it's decidedly non-zero. Edit: this was not intended as a dig at Michael Moore or anyone else. The fact that he made a documentary featuring Flint means that more people than otherwise should be are aware of the place, hence, media stories about it are more likely to gain traction with the general population. Michael Moore humanized Flint. His making it recognizeable, I think, aided in the rise of this particular story, IMO. I also think the name of the city helped its presence in the news cycle. Flint, being short and a homonym for another English word is far more memorable than say "Scarborough" (which, amusingly, was the first name that came to mind when I tried to come up with the most memorable unmemorable name for a town.)
- mturmon 10y ago
  The problem is, this kind of speculation really goes nowhere. It's unprovable. And, even if there was a connection between peripheral awareness of Flint due to Moore and the legs this story has...so what?

thesimpsons1022 10y ago

and these same people vote in people that shut down the epa and do everything possible to poison their children. let them get what they asked for.

intransigent 10y ago
Consider the possibility that lead poisoning inflicts just the type of mental disabilities that would lead a person to vote in such a fashion to begin with. With that in mind, is this really how you feel?
mikestew 10y ago
and these same people You know better than that, or rather, you know that you don't know that. Hard enough to get the water quality data, apparently, let alone join that to voter records.
dang 10y ago
Posting like this here will get your account banned, so please don't do it again. Instead, please post civilly and substantively or not at all. Also, please don't use HN for ideological or political battle. That's not what this site is for. It's good to (re)-read the following to get an idea of the kind of discussion we're hoping for here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

sytelus 10y ago

I went to my water utility's website to find out their numbers. First I was shocked that they publish their numbers only once a year! And even in that report they say last lead measurement was in 2013 because Department of Health only requites measurement every 3 years! With Trump about to set loose entire Oil, gas and fracking industry like never before this might get lot worse.

JauntTrooper 10y ago

This is a public health disaster. It's tough to really fathom the number of children across the country that will suffer mental and behavioral problems for life because of this. Why are there not more lawsuits? Is the scope of the damage too difficult to quantify, or the negligent parties too diffuse/remote to sue? As much as our litigation-based culture is vilified, it can help spur action by changing the cost/benefit of doing nothing and force companies/governments to step up and fix this before more people are hurt. The risk of Mesothelioma lawsuits, for example, help add some seriousness to asbestos exposure claims.

nerdponx 10y ago
Too diffuse. This is a classic "principal-agent" problem.
ianai 10y ago
I'd bet that's down the road. Only recently has testing your water for lead/etc become cheap, easy, and relevant. If you tested your water for lead 10 years ago society would probably label you paranoid - still might in many places.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > If you tested your water for lead 10 years ago society would probably label you paranoid New York City sends you a free lead test kit, if you ask for it [1]. [1] http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/1266/water-lead-test-kit-request http://www1.nyc.gov/nyc-resources/service/1266/water-lead-te...
h4nkoslo 10y ago
There are a shitload of lawsuits, whenever a plausible plaintiff can be found.
- RawData 10y ago
  Yeah but who do you sue if the old flaky paint in the house you own causes your kid to get lead poisoning?

tn13 10y ago

It is hard to sue government. It is even harder to make them lose their jobs. When it comes to compensation they will simply use our own money to pay back. Utilities remains a major pain in USA partly because of the ridiculous government control which invariably leads to corruption. I have been exclusively using distilled water in Sunnyvale for last 3 years. Water in Sunnyvale has dangerous levels of pesticides if not lead.

emodendroket 10y ago
I don't see any reason to think totally privatizing and deregulating utilities would be any safer.
- mdpopescu 10y ago
  Here's one: companies like repeat customers.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    lol. Yeah, it works great for broadband. What are you going to do, shut off the water? Or will multiple companies be building out competing water infrastructure? Let's be realistic here.
  - Tempest1981 10y ago
    Remember PG&E and the San Bruno fire? Companies fight hard to deny liability when they harm their customers. There is no competition in many cases. http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/07/27/san-bruno-blast-pge-criminal-case-goes-to-the-jury/ http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/07/27/san-bruno-blast-pge-cr...
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Assuming you can even figure out you're being slowly poisoned.

hkmurakami 10y ago

It looks like California is relatively clean on this scale, but what about the Superfund sites? I feel like those are gray areas that get much less attention than I would expect. With former semiconductor fab sites and former military sites getting increasingly developed with sometimes only a few feet of topsoil removed for cleanup (plus some kind of shielding material?), and a seeming lack of hard data for long term health impact, count me among the concerned. (happy to have my worries put to rest by HN'ers!)

seanp2k2 10y ago
Yeah, can't wait for them to try bringing manufacturing back to America. Hopefully California will shut anything like that down.
- neohaven 10y ago
  Because having it elsewhere is better? Here we'd have the resources to hopefully make it safe(r). China doesn't give a damn about the environment.

bananash 10y ago

i tried to tell people vaccines are little ufos that cause breast cancer and vagina cancer and testicle cancer its very scary how many disease-rate graphs go straight up since the vaccine rate was 7x'd in 1975: abortion, miscarriage, retardation, autism, deformity, vagina cancer, prostate cancer, testicular cancer, lower sperm count, breast cancer, adhd, chrons, asperbergers, spinal diseases, learning disability, parkinsons and dementia, als, alzheimers, various other learning disabilities deformities and abnormalitys searching for a catalyst: and vaccine rate further 4x'ed in 1980, and 4x'ed in 1990, and 4x'ed in 2000 they still just laugh and say shit like that cant happen, and im making it up (article on it forth coming, with ~25 graphs) the data was removed from reddit, hackernews, and 4chan, without reason

ap22213 10y ago

I remember reading years ago about how water utilities were replacing chlorine with chloramine because it was cheaper. From what I understand, chloramine is more corrosive and it erodes the lining in the lead pipes. Does anyone know if it's standard practice for water companies to do their quality sampling at the taps?

randomnumber314 10y ago

I put together a search engine[1] for this very thing a few months ago. The data is publicly available, but obscure and usually buried in poorly described .gov city pages. [1]http://bit.ly/2h5yGNg http://bit.ly/2h5yGNg

tboyd47 10y ago

When it comes to testing your water, some counties offer home testing services to concerned residents for free. I urge everybody with kids or thinking of having them to check your local county government's website for information. Even if the water treatment facility in your area is free of lead, the pipes in your home or neighborhood might not be.