Home » Posts tagged 'lead'

Tag Archives: lead

Image: Many toxic water incidents are HIDDEN from the public, so take a sip at your own risk

(Natural News) If you assume your tap water must be safe to drink because you haven’t heard otherwise, you could be gambling with your health.

Seven years ago, the American Society for Civil Engineers issued a warning that most of the country’s drinking water infrastructure was “nearing the end of its useful life.” Not much has been done since then to resolve the problem, and now it is emerging that many toxic water incidents are hidden from the public.

The Office of Inspector General criticized the EPA and various U.S. water utilities in a 2019 report for failing to consistently and accurately report drinking water risks. According to the OIG’s investigation, there are a series of problems that could be putting public health at risk from contaminated drinking water supplies.

For example, they found that some of the agencies responsible for enforcing water regulations have not been consistent in enforcing public notice requirements. Many have not been reporting and tracking violations, nor have they been consistently issuing public notices. Because the EPA’s oversight protocols don’t cover all of the public notice requirements, some agencies can’t be sure whether the public water systems in their purview are notifying consumers of safety violations.

They also say the public water systems do not have accurate guidance related to the tools currently available for issuing public notices and could be missing out on chances to inform people effectively of problems with their drinking water. On top of that, the public notice guidance that the EPA gives to public water systems and primary agencies is outdated and does not reflect the current regulations.

Lead contamination is rampant

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

94% of Americans who grew up during the era of leaded gasoline found to be lead poisoned and brain damaged

January 11, 2019

94% of Americans who grew up during the era of leaded gasoline found to be lead poisoned and brain damaged

(Natural News) A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 94 percent of Americans who were exposed to leaded gasoline in childhood may show signs of lower IQ scores and socioeconomic status in adulthood.

Health experts pooled data from blood samples of than 500 participants who grew up in the era of leaded gasoline. Research showed that participants who had more than 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood at age 11 had significant reductions in IQ points in adulthood. Researchers said participants who had high lead exposure exhibited IQs that were 4.25 points lower than less-exposed individuals at age 38.

The study also found a dose-dependent effect of lead exposure on the participant’s IQ levels. According to the study, each 5-microgram increase in blood lead levels coincide with up to 1.5 IQ point loss in participants. Lead gasoline exposure in childhood was also associated with lower socioeconomic status in adulthood. Researchers said study participants who had more than 10 micrograms of lead in the blood obtained occupations with socioeconomic status four-tenths lower than those who had less exposure.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the current lead exposure value that requires public health intervention is five micrograms per deciliter. Data from the longitudinal study showed that 94 percent of participants in the study exceeded this rate. The CDC also found that four million American households have children who are exposed to high levels of lead. According to the CDC, approximately half a million U.S. children ages one to five exhibit blood lead levels higher than five micrograms per deciliter.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Lead Poisoning Was Discovered in Flint’s Water

July 11, 2018

How Lead Poisoning Was Discovered in Flint’s Water

The toxic water supply in Flint, Michigan, which exposed up to 42,000 children under 2 years of age to lead poisoning, was a major media story a few years back. Ingestion of high dosages of lead, particularly among infants, results in cognitive impairment, attention and mood disorders, and aggressive behavior. Mona Hanna-Attisha’s account of that urban man-made disaster reads both as a detective story and as an exposé of government corruption in her book “What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City.”

She brings the reader along as she uncovers Flint’s calamity within the context of her experience as a Christian Iraqi immigrant living in one of America’s poorest cities. Flint, the eighth-largest “majority-minority” city in the U.S. (57 percent black, 37 percent white), is where a kid born will live 15 years less than one born in the neighboring communities. As a pediatrician working at Flint’s Hurley Hospital, one of the few public hospitals left in the country, her advocacy was driven by its “mandate to serve the community above all.”

Although she had been an environmental activist in college, her story reveals how even the most vigilant of us must recognize that “the eyes don’t see what the mind doesn’t know.” She begins her journey blithely comforting her patients’ concerns about the quality of their drinking water: “The tap water is just fine.”

Her concerns only surface when she found out, by chance, that when Flint had to switch its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River to lower its costs, government agencies were not properly checking for lead in the water supply. Her fellow health advocate, Marc Edwards, a self-described conservative Republican and civil-engineering professor from Virginia Tech, explained to her that even though the federal law required proper inspections, “The EPA and the states work hand in hand to bury problems.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Environmental Nightmare! Dozens Of Highly Toxic Substances Have Been Found In Tap Water All Over America

July 14, 2017

Environmental Nightmare! Dozens Of Highly Toxic Substances Have Been Found In Tap Water All Over America

After reading this article, you will never look at tap water the same way again. Most Americans have generally assumed that the water coming out of our taps is perfectly safe, but the Flint water crisis and other similar incidents are starting to help people to understand that there are some very dangerous substances in our water. In particular, I am talking about things like arsenic, lead, atrazine, perchlorate and a whole host of pharmaceutical drugs. According to an absolutely stunning NRDC report, close to 77 million Americans received their water from systems “that violated federal protections” in 2015. And even if you get your water from a system that meets federal standards, that still does not mean that it is safe.

Let’s start by talking about arsenic. Earlier today I came across an article that talked about how levels of arsenic in the water at some schools in the San Joaquin Valley “exceed the maximum federal safety levels by as much as three times”…

Reef-Sunset Unified School District Superintendent David East is worried about water. Not because of the drought—record rains this past winter ended five years of dry times. Rather, East, whose district encompasses the small towns of Avenal and Kettleman City on the San Joaquin Valley’s west side, is worried about the safety of the water that the 2,700 students in his school district are being given to drink.

That’s because arsenic levels in the drinking water at some schools in the San Joaquin Valley exceed the maximum federal safety levels by as much as three times. And arsenic is not the only threat to schoolchildren. High levels of pesticides, nitrate, bacteria, and naturally occurring uranium also contaminate groundwater in many rural parts of the state.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Flint Residents May Have Been Drinking PFCs In Addition to Lead

February 17, 2016

FLINT RESIDENTS MAY HAVE BEEN DRINKING PFCS IN ADDITION TO LEAD

RESIDENTS OF FLINT, MICHIGAN, who drank lead in their water may also have been exposed to perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs, according to a report from the Michigan Department of Community Health.

The May 2015 report showed elevated levels of PFCs in the Flint River — including PFOA, also known as C8, the chemical that spread into drinking water around a DuPont plant in West Virginia and led to a landmark class-action lawsuit. In addition to C8 and PFOS, a similar molecule that’s also based on a chain of eight carbon atoms, scientists found 11 other PFCs in the Flint River — more than in any of the other water sources tested around the state.

In 2014, in an effort to save money, Flint switched the source of its drinking water from Lake Huron to the Flint River, a change that resulted in residents being exposed to lead levels high enough to cause irreversible brain damage in children.

The Michigan report was based on tests of surface water and fish for PFCs in 13 sites around the state. According to Jennifer Eisner, a public information officer for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the report was not designed to evaluate drinking water. Eisner referred questions about the dangers the PFCs posed to people drinking water from the Flint River to the Department of Environmental Quality, which did not return our phone calls.

Michigan’s testing revealed PFOS in the Flint River at levels that exceeded the state’s limits for both non-drinking water and drinking water. The scientists found C8 in 12 of the 13 bodies of water tested, though at levels below the official cutoff for concern. Michigan has not set safety levels for the other 11 PFCs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We’ll all be Flint Michigan someday: U.S. water infrastructure is falling apart

January 31, 2016

We’ll all be Flint Michigan someday: U.S. water infrastructure is falling apart

NRC. 2006. Drinking Water Distribution Systems: Assessing and Reducing Risks Committee on Public Water Supply Distribution Systems: Assessing and Reducing Risks. National Research Council, National Academies Press.

[ According to this Free National Research Council report, most water systems and distribution pipes will be reaching the end of their expected life spans in the next 30 years.

With nearly a million miles of utility water infrastructure, 5 million miles of private home and building infrastructure, 154,000 storage facilities, and more, it will be hard to replace within 30 years, and the EPA estimated the cost would be over $205 billion dollars.

This is important because one of the main reasons lifespan rose above 50 years last century was clean drinking water. Residents in Flint who drank lead-poisoned water may not only have their lifespan shortened, but their quality of life reduced as well. Being able to harvest your own rainwater and store it is one way to protect yourself. Excerpts from this 404 page document follow. They are not in order. ]

U.S. Water infrastructure is falling apart (my title)

TABLE 4-7 Material Life Expectancies

Distribution System Component	Typical Life Expectancies,years
Concrete & metal storage tanks	30
Transmission pipes	35
Valves	35
Mechanical valves	15
Hydrants	40
Service Lines	30

SOURCE: EPA (2004). EPA’s Note: These expected useful lives are drawn from a variety of sources. The estimates assume that assets have been properly maintained.

The extent of water distribution pipes in the United States is estimated to be a total length of 980,000 miles (1.6 x 106 km), which is being replaced at an estimated rate of once every 200 years. Rates of repair and rehabilitation have not been estimated.

There is a large range in the type and age of the pipes that make up water distribution systems. The oldest cast iron pipes from the late 19th century are typically described as having an expected average useful lifespan of about 120 years because of the pipe wall thickness.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

6 Cities in Michigan Have Even Higher Levels of Lead than Flint

January 29, 2016

6 Cities in Michigan Have Even Higher Levels of Lead than Flint

(ANTIMEDIA) As the nation rightly focuses on Flint’s ongoing water crisis, other cities in the state of Michigan face even higher levels of lead contamination. The alarming pervasiveness of potentially toxic drinking water extends across the United States.

The Detroit News reports that “Elevated blood-lead levels are seen in a higher percentage of children in parts of Grand Rapids, Jackson, Detroit, Saginaw, Muskegon, Holland and several other cities, proof that the scourge of lead has not been eradicated despite decades of public health campaigns and hundreds of millions of dollars spent to find and eliminate it.”

Of over 7,000 children tested in the Highland Park and Hamtramck areas of Detroit in 2014, 13.5 percent tested positive for lead. Among four zip codes in Grand Rapids, one in ten children had lead in their blood. In Adrian and south-central Michigan, more than 12 percent of 640 children tested had positive results.

These overall numbers are higher than Flint’s, where Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha found lead in up to 6.3 percent of children in the highest-risk areas; while The Guardianreported Dr. Hanna-Attisha has also said the rate is as high at 15 percent in certain “hot spots,” the size of those samples was not listed. Even so, the overall figures across Michigan are lower than in previous years. In 2012, children tested across Michigan had lead in their blood at a rate of 4.5 percent, about five times less than the rate ten years prior, which reached an alarming 25 percent. In spite of the decrease in recent years, however, thousands of children in Michigan are still affected.

“In 2013, that level sank to 3.9 percent and fell again to 3.5 percent in 2014. But that is still 5,053 children under age 6 who tested positive in 2014,” the Detroit News explained. “Each had lead levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to Test Your Drinking Water (And Why You Should Do It)

January 26, 2016

How to Test Your Drinking Water (And Why You Should Do It)

While we would love to be able to trust the liquid flowing from our faucets, anyone who pays even half-hearted attention to the news knows that we can no longer expect safety in our drinking water unless we confirm it ourselves.

The EPA and Michigan’s Gov. Snyder have now added to the list of reasons that I have trust issues. Water is one of the most important survival topics around – it’s so important to me that I wrote an entire book about it.

Every day, new horrors are being uncovered in relation to the drinking water in Flint, Michigan. Residents of the city have been drinking water that was presumably safe for the past year without knowing that it was actually contaminated with chemical byproducts, E. coli, Legionnaires’ disease and lead. It appears that both the EPA and the governor of Michigan knew the water was unsafe for quite some time, but no one said a word to warn the people of Flint. To heap insult onto injury, the water company has had the audacity to bill people for the poisoned water and has even sent out shut-off notices.

So, do you really think you can trust the water flowing from your own taps? If Flint was the last straw for you, it’s time to take matters into your own hands and test your drinking water for contaminants. Whether your water source is private or municipal, the onus for your family’s safety is on you.

Where to get a water testing kit

Water testing kits are readily available on Amazon.

The Watersafe Well Water Test Kit was specifically designed to help you test quickly and easily for the 10 most common contaminants found in private wellwater, including: iron, copper, lead, bacteria, pesticides, nitrates, nitrites, chlorine, pH and hardness. (order here)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Governor Knew About Flint Water Poisoning for Nearly a Year, Tried to Shift Blame

January 22, 2016

What Snyder Knew: Flint Email Dump Shows Attempts to Shift the Blame

As far back as February 2015, the governor’s administration was informed of issues with Flint’s water

Only seven emails sent by Gov. Rick Snyder related to the city’s water system were included in Wednesday’s release. (Photo: AP)

Redacted emails released Wednesday by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder show that his administration was informed of problems with Flint’s water almost a year ago, many months before the embattled governor or his staff begrudgingly admitted to bearing any responsibility for poisoning a city—or for fixing the problem.

A background memo sent to the governor on February 1, 2015, “dismissed the pleas of Flint’s then-mayor Dayne Walling for state assistance, saying that the mayor had ‘seized on public panic … to ask the state for loan forgiveness and more money for infrastructure improvement’,” the Guardian reports from Detroit.

According to FOX2 Detroit, the email says the governor and Walling “had a telephone conversation and the mayor has pledged to work together on solutions.” Furthermore, it adds that Flint Representative Sheldon Neeley had “sent the governor a letter, saying that his constituents are on the verge of civil unrest” due to the water issue.

Also included in the backgrounder were statements from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, listing three factors affecting the appearance of water in Flint. CNNreports:

“It’s the Flint River,” it said first. “With hard water, you get a different flavor and feel. It’s why General Motors suspended use of Flint Water—it was rusting their parts.”

Second, “the system is old. Flint has more than 500 miles of water pipes. More than half of those pipe miles are more than 75 years old. Much of it is cast iron. Hard water can react with cast iron and exacerbates the rusty factor, which creates that brown water that angry residents were holding up in jugs for the media cameras last week.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Budget Cuts and Negligence Poisoned the Drinking Water in Flint, Mich.

January 17, 2016

Budget Cuts and Negligence Poisoned the Drinking Water in Flint, Mich.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in 2011. (Michigan Municipal League / CC BY-ND 2.0)

Calls for the resignation of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder are intensifying in the face of evidence that he allowed 100,000 residents of the city of Flint to continue cooking, drinking and bathing in water known to be contaminated with lead.

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is among those demanding that Snyder leave office.

“There are no excuses,” Sanders said in a statement released Saturday. “The governor long ago knew about the lead in Flint’s water. He did nothing. As a result, hundreds of children were poisoned. Thousands may have been exposed to potential brain damage from lead. Gov. Snyder should resign.”

“[F]amilies will suffer from lead poisoning for the rest of their lives,” Sanders continued. “Children in Flint will be plagued with brain damage and other health problems.”

Reports say the problem began in spring 2014, when the cash-strapped city switched water sources, hoping to save money. Corrosive water drawn from the Flint River stripped lead from pipes, resulting in high levels of the toxic metal appearing in the blood of children. Subsequently, the city switched sources again.

Julia Lurie at Mother Jones magazine reported that cases of Legionnaires’ disease in the area have spiked over the past year and a half, with 10 people dying out of a total of 87 cases. Marc Edwards, a scientist at Virginia Tech who helped expose the water’s lead contamination, told the Detroit Free Press that there’s a “very strong likelihood” that the change in water supply enabled the disease’s recent surge.

The New York Times reports:

In the last three weeks, a panel appointed by Mr. Snyder reported that state officials had for months wrongly brushed aside complaints about the contamination. The governor apologized for the state’s performance, Michigan’s top environmental regulator resigned, and federal agencies announced that they were investigating.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Flint’s Contaminated Drinking Water is Third Water Crisis For Michigan Governor

January 11, 2016

Flint’s Contaminated Drinking Water is Third Water Crisis For Michigan Governor

Residents put at risk by ideology, misguided decisions.

Photo courtesy Michigan Municipal League via Flickr Creative Commons

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is at the center of criticism over a public health crisis in Flint, where a state decision to switch the city’s water source ended with lead-contaminated water. Here, he speaks to the Michigan Municipal League in 2011.Click image to enlarge.

On Tuesday, January 12, residents of Flint, Michigan are invited to bring their children to a local elementary school for a “Lead Testing and Family Fun Night.” Combining a school carnival with medical tests to check children’s blood for abnormally high levels of lead, the event is an example of the bizarre circumstances that families are contending with in Flint, Michigan’s seventh largest city.

A series of public decisions, driven by misguided management practices and ideological principles that backfired, converged during the past 20 months to poison the city’s drinking water and cause one of the most severe public health threats in the United States. The extent of the risk to Flint’s residents is not clear.

Flint’s crisis is the third time during the administration of Republican Governor Rick Snyder that decisions about water supply and water quality at the most senior levels of state government have put state residents in harm’s way. In 2014, again as a result of the governor’s decision to appoint an emergency manager in Detroit, drinking water services were cut off for thousands of city residents said to be in arrears on their water bills. But water services for many of the city’s largest commercial water consumers, which owed the city water department millions of dollars in unpaid charges, were not halted.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

State of Emergency Declared in Michigan City After Lead Found in Children’s Blood

December 16, 2015

State of Emergency Declared in Michigan City After Lead Found in Children’s Blood

Flint, Michigan– “The City of Flint has experienced a Manmade disaster,” said the city’s mayor Monday evening, as she declared a state of emergency over evidently staggering levels of lead in the city’s tap water. Mayor Karen M. Weaver has requested federal assistance to deal with the fallout from over a year’s worth of tainted water delivered to Flint residents and, allegedly, falsely declared safe by government officials.

In September, news broke that lead contamination was on the rise in Flint. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha of the Hurley Medical Center concluded that since the water supply switched from the Detroit system to Flint River in April 2014, the number of infants and children with elevated levels of lead in their blood had doubled, from 2.1% to 4%. While the rise seems small, it is statistically significant. Even so, Attisha warned: “My research shows that lead levels have gone up. I cannot say it’s from the water. But that’s, you know, the thing that has happened.“

The World Health Organization says“lead affects children’s brain development resulting in reduced intelligence quotient (IQ), behavioral changes such as shortening of attention span and increased antisocial behavior, and reduced educational attainment. Lead exposure also causes anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity and toxicity to the reproductive organs. The neurological and behavioral effects of lead are believed to be irreversible.”

The high levels of lead have been attributed to old pipes and plumbing, which researchers say rubs off more into Flint River water than it does other sources. Because the water itself is more corrosive than other supplies, it erodes the pipes it flows through, picking up lead along the way.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: lead

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

SOURCE: EPA (2004). EPA’s Note: These expected useful lives are drawn from a variety of sources. The estimates assume that assets have been properly maintained.

Latest Posts