March 15, 2018
By Zoe Schlanger
The Flint water crisis (click here) was the product of government inaction, mostly attributed to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Now, the same state agency is in the spotlight for a delay in responding to another drinking water scandal, this time involving waterproofing chemicals and Hush Puppies shoes.
Last summer, private drinking-water wells in Belmont, Michigan—a small community just north of Grand Rapids, the second-largest city in Michigan—tested positive for extremely high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), an ingredient in Teflon, the chemical used to make non-stick cookware, and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), a widely used flame retardant. Both chemicals are part of a class of compounds called PFAS, and both happen to be great at waterproofing shoes. They’re surfactants, which means they reduce the surface tension of water, making it slide right off whatever the surfactant is applied to....
Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) exposure is known to case liver and bladder cancer with different rates in men and women. Both chemicals are known to cross the placenta into the baby in pregnant women.
There is a second study regarding the Legionnaires Disease that killed due to widely fluctuating cholorine levels when the Flint River was used as a water source to Flint residents. This study was conducted by CSU, Colorado State University of Fort Collins at the request of Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). MDHHS asked three Michigan universities to team with CSU for this study.
March 15, 2018
By Katie Porter
Research and analysis done by Dr. Sammy Zahran, (click here) associate professor in the departments of epidemiology and economics at CSU, and his colleagues show that the rate of LD was almost seven times higher than normal in Flint and surrounding areas while the city culled drinking water from the tainted Flint River. They found 80 percent of cases are linked to problems with the water, such as low chlorine levels....
...LD is a type of waterborne lung infection, and symptoms are pneumonia-like, including cough, fever, headaches and nausea, according to the Centers for Disease Control....
...after observing a spike in the illness during the summers of 2014 and 2015. In that time frame, Genesse County (where Flint is) reported 90 cases of LD; 12 people died....
...What the team noticed was “complete chaos” in chlorine levels that coincide perfectly with the city’s switch from Lake Huron to Flint River water. While levels remained consistent for the first year and a half of the reports, they went haywire in April 2014 — some quadrupling to a level Zahran says “can cause a skin itch or burn your eyes.” Chlorine levels became wildly inconsistent, with some weeks returning levels close to zero, only to have a spike the following week....
...“Since chlorine is highly reactive, a heavy metal leaking off a corroding pipe would bind with the chlorine and then it’s not available to affect the bacteria,” explains Dr. Michele Swanson, a co-author of the study and University of Michigan microbiology professor.
“during the switch, the risk of a Flint neighborhood having a case of LD increased by 80 percent per 1 mg/L decrease in free chlorine, as calculated from the extensive variation in chlorine observed.”...
This is the amazing part. First, the study group is put together with eminently qualified people and then when the group concluded after examining enormous amounts of information, MDHHS stated the study did not meet their standards and pulled any funding.
What MDHHS wanted to have the study say is that the Legionnaires Disease occurred in the hospital and not from the loss of free chlorine in the Flint Water.
The corruption in regard to the state's departments regarding this tragedy is simply unbelievable. CSU has stated they have independent funding and will continue their research.
This is still yet another cover-up by the Snyder Administration and Snyder's Czar of the entire state government. They all need to be prosecuted and now.
This is what happens when an elected official is more interested in money and where it goes than doing their jobs, especially at the level of Governor. Both the crisis in Belmont, Michigan and Flint, Michigan clearly shows an administration little interested in the people so much as their budgets.
