Flint has always loved it's people. Flint's power to protect it's people was interrupted. That interruption is the issue.
February 5, 2018By Francie Diep
The 2016 water crisis in Flint, Michigan, (click here) was a story of failure: the failure of bureaucrats, whose malfeasance may have cost human lives; the failure of our aging infrastructure; the failure of austerity, which led to the prioritization of money over lives. And it was a failure that had enormous public-health consequences.
In 2014 through 2015, Genesee County, where Flint is located, had the nation's third-largest recorded outbreak of Legionnaire's disease, a severe form of pneumonia that people catch by inhaling microscopic droplets of water contaminated with legionella bacteria. Eighty-seven Genesee County residents fell ill; 12 of them died.
Scientists and officials are now asking whether the outbreak is indeed connected to officials' neglect of the Flint water system. Nick Lyon, the head of Michigan's health department, is facing charges of involuntary manslaughter; prosecutors say he knew about the rash of disease cases around Flint, but failed to act. Meanwhile, the state has argued that the outbreak was caused by the hospital where many people were treated. Now, a new study offers fresh evidence that the water was, for the most part, to blame....
Below is the online notation of the article published by the National Academy of Sciences. Kindly take note of the "Footnotes" at the link. The article can be ordered through the NAS.
The issue was the shifting levels of "free chlorine" that provided the OPPORTUNITY for the bacteria to increase enough to be a menace. A constant level of free chlorine in the water maintained an environment where the bacteria could not flourish.
This is what public health is all about. It is about knowing the dangers to people and treating the environment, including the water, so any threat is eliminated. The science of public health is precise. There are no questions. What works is known to work. The physical world, including chemistry of that physical world, is known to scientists. Research and continuing data collection over centuries in the USA has provided by far enough information to allow policies to be in place that work for a community.
It is when those policies are ignored and considered a nuisance by government due to fiscal policy that peril to the people becomes obvious. Don't think for one minute that what worked before the crisis in Flint was wrong. The water was safe before the crisis because of policies that worked. There is no question, what occurred was dangerous and the results show that.
Risk is not public policy. Safety is public policy.
"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America," (click here)
February 5,2018,
, , , ,
, , and
Unresolved is the etiology of the 2014–2015 Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in Genesee County, MI. Flint is the most populous city in Genesee County, and the outbreak coincided with damaged water infrastructure and the subsequent Flint water crisis. The unprecedented disturbance in water quality within Flint’s drinking water distribution system allowed the evaluation of the statistical relationship between free chlorine residual and Legionnaires’ disease risk within a full-scale drinking water system. Through the integration of multiple datasets, results from numerous causal inference tests implicate changes in water quality, as reflected by changes in free chlorine residual, in the City of Flint as responsible for the outbreak. These findings provide public health professionals and engineers unparalleled scientific evidence to reduce waterborne disease.
Abstract
The 2014–2015 Legionnaires’ disease (LD) outbreak in Genesee County, MI, and the outbreak resolution in 2016 coincided with changes in the source of drinking water to Flint’s municipal water system. Following the switch in water supply from Detroit to Flint River water, the odds of a Flint resident presenting with LD increased 6.3-fold (95% CI: 2.5, 14.0). This risk subsided following boil water advisories, likely due to residents avoiding water, and returned to historically normal levels with the switch back in water supply. During the crisis, as the concentration of free chlorine in water delivered to Flint residents decreased, their risk of acquiring LD increased. When the average weekly chlorine level in a census tract was <0.5 mg/L or <0.2 mg/L, the odds of an LD case presenting from a Flint neighborhood increased by a factor of 2.9 (95% CI: 1.4, 6.3) or 3.9 (95% CI: 1.8, 8.7), respectively. During the switch, the risk of a Flint neighborhood having a case of LD increased by 80% per 1 mg/L decrease in free chlorine, as calculated from the extensive variation in chlorine observed. In communities adjacent to Flint, the probability of LD occurring increased with the flow of commuters into Flint. Together, the results support the hypothesis that a system-wide proliferation of legionellae was responsible for the LD outbreak in Genesee County, MI.
