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Flint, MI

pourdeac said:
Just what is means....the measured level of something has been deemed acceptable. In this case blood levels of lead in micrograms per deciliter is the way it's defined. 10 used to be the acceptable/safe level for adults and kids. Most people in Flint have lead levels less than 10. The safety limit for kids was reduced to 5 ug/dl a couple of years ago...and some kids in Flint are above that limit. NPR reported something like 4% of kids under 5 showed levels > 5 up from 2% prior to the switch and the average for those above is 6.5. The federal level for lead in water I believe is 15 ppb. For most people lead wasn't really that much of a problem....but apparently in a few specific homes levels skyrocketed both in the water and the blood. I doubt anyone expected that to happen.
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thx for answering. i too wonder where you're getting this from. IDK a lot about this, but my understanding was that since lead has no use in the body, medical consensus is that no level of lead in potable water is safe. Like you said 10 used to be safe, down to five, but i'm guessing the reality is simply that U.S. water infrastructure is such that making 0 ppb water is unrealistic for a sig. minority of areas. what the government regulations say is safe, and what actually is according to most MDs, are two different things.

If I put 2 identical cups of water on the table, one with 15 ppb (ppm seems more likely?) and one without, which would you grab to drink? for your own child to drink? you seem to be implying that one is as safe as the other, i don't think so, especially for a small child with chronic exposure.
 
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I'm sure pour would choose whatever water the government told him was safe.
 
nailed what i was trying to say.
 
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WFFaithful said:
Links?
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Here's a great read from the American Chemical Society trade mag about the issues in Flint....and how complicated things got. It has some of the data I posted and it talks about the problems, including how they had super high chloride levels in some areas (to combat pathogens) but at specific homes, there was none. It talks about timelines, the actual chemistry involved, and how things like pH changed over time.

It really boils down to the system being so old that changing the water supply caused massive changes to the system that were hard to control. The additive people talked about was evidently phosphate, which is used by Detroit's system. The moral of the story...don't change water supplies.

http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i7/Lead-Ended-Flints-Tap-Water.html
 
dmcheatw said:
thx for answering. i too wonder where you're getting this from. IDK a lot about this, but my understanding was that since lead has no use in the body, medical consensus is that no level of lead in potable water is safe. Like you said 10 used to be safe, down to five, but i'm guessing the reality is simply that U.S. water infrastructure is such that making 0 ppb water is unrealistic for a sig. minority of areas. what the government regulations say is safe, and what actually is according to most MDs, are two different things.

If I put 2 identical cups of water on the table, one with 15 ppb (ppm seems more likely?) and one without, which would you grab to drink? for your own child to drink? you seem to be implying that one is as safe as the other, i don't think so, especially for a small child with chronic exposure.
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The data I posted has been all over the place. Some of it is in the link I just posted. What other link do you want?

You are kind of confusing the two measurements. One is lead measured in human plasma (10 ug/dl adult safety limit) and the other is the limit as measured in the water itself..an EPA number of 15 ppb. From the ACS article, the regs state that if 10% of the homes are higher than 15 ppb, then the system needs to take action under the law so even in the national regs, homes are allowed past the 15 ppb (if not 10% of the whole)>

Would I drink water with 15 ppb lead in it? Sure. There are always safe levels so the notion that MDs want to go to some sort of zero tolerant extremes is a bit much. Some elements are very valuable in trace amounts and we don't know why...selenium for example. Lead has been everywhere so I'm not sure humans have ever even been in a 0 lead environment to know the difference. There's a huge ~2000 gallon tank outside my window that's deemed too toxic to dump down the drain because mercury levels are higher than 52 ppt. It has less mercury in it than is allowed in a can of tuna...but deemed toxic as water. It's kind of crazy. Most everything has beneficial effects at certain limits, is benign/safe at other limits, and is toxic at higher limits, even water. It's called drowning (chemistry joke).

The problem with Flint wasn't that it was at or slightly above 15 ppb, it's that in a lot of specific homes, levels went much much higher. One home cited in the ACS piece was at 13,200 ppb. That's what caused levels of lead in some kids to go slightly higher than the 5 ug/dl limit. So that is a problem and it needed to be fixed. But the actual health problem/worry for kids in this case is even a bit uncertain. The claim is lead levels higher than 5 ug/dl decrease IQ by 1 unit or something like that. IQ is subjective to start with so...not sure how that could be measured in a real study, let alone by tiny amounts like 1 unit. The houses where lead levels were enormous...that's a problem. For most homes..probably not a big issue.
 
PhDeac said:
I'm sure pour would choose whatever water the government told him was safe.
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I'm not the one that believes that government can solve or should solve all problems. I have a well. I monitor it for contaminants and I filter it for drinking. Problem solved.
 
So pour is taking the personal responsibility stance to blame the people of Flint for drinking the poisoned water.
 
Well, look at your post #101; as you said that level of lead has been "deemed acceptable," not that it's healthy, and was reduced only a couple of years ago. i think you can bet that regulatory level will be reduced again, so what's considered safe now won't be tomorrow. it sure isn't going up.

If you look at the second Cosmos, ep. 7, the entire episode is about lead, and Neil deGrasse Tyson directly states the medical consensus is that no amount of lead is safe. my other references are below:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs379/en/ note the sixth and seventh bullet points

http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/ Note the first sentence of the last paragraph where they state "No safe blood lead level has been identified."

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/other/su6104.pdf Note where they state: "To date, no safe blood lead threshold for the adverse effects of lead on infant or child neurodevelopment has been identified (2)."

http://extension.psu.edu/natural-re...ter-testing/pollutants/lead-in-drinking-water note where they say:

Accounting for other sources of lead exposure (e.g., food, dust), the U.S. EPA set the maximum allowable concentration of lead in public drinking water at 15 µg/L. (Many experts on lead toxicology believe the safe level should be 10 µg/L or less, but for purposes of this discussion we will use the EPA’s level of 15 µg/L.) Since lead serves no beneficial purpose in the human body, it is best if drinking water contains no lead. State drinking water standards must be at least as strict as the EPA drinking water standard of 15 µg/L.
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There is another link of a study commissioned by the CDC that says the old notion of a "toxic limit" is fundamentally flawed because any amount of lead in the body is toxic. I'll try to find it if you want, but some simple google searches turned up harmonious results so IDK that i need to provide any more references.

pourdeac said:
The data I posted has been all over the place. Some of it is in the link I just posted. What other link do you want?
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i would like you to provide a link that explains why water with 5 to 15 ppb of lead is safe to consume? that's the issue. that link just explains how the law/regulations apply and the chemistry behind what happened, it has nothing to say about the safety of these arbitrary (5, 10, 15 ppb) government regulations.

pourdeac said:
You are kind of confusing the two measurements.
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Thanks for the clarification, but still not the essence of my post. Besides, lead levels in blood are a function of lead in the environment. So having lead in your water supply will move the lead level to closer to the toxic limit.

pourdeac said:
There are always safe levels so the notion that MDs want to go to some sort of zero tolerant extremes is a bit much. Some elements are very valuable in trace amounts and we don't know why...selenium for example.
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That's true, but lead is not one of those trace metals the body needs. having no lead is not an extreme; and will become the health standard.

pourdeac said:
Lead has been everywhere so I'm not sure humans have ever even been in a 0 lead environment to know the difference.
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The opposite is true, most humans most of the time before the industrial revolution had no reason to encounter lead in their environment.

pourdeac said:
Most everything has beneficial effects at certain limits, is benign/safe at other limits, and is toxic at higher limits, even water. It's called drowning (chemistry joke).
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I agree with that, but lead is not one of those things. current research is challenging the notion that there is any safe limit at all for a fundamentally toxic element.

You haven't explained why regulatory limits for lead in the bloodstream or water supply are the same as what is actually safe for a human.
 
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Study: Flint paid highest rate in U.S. for water

A survey of the 500 largest water systems in the country, conducted last year, found that on average, Flint residents paid about $864 a year for water service, nearly double the national average and about three-and-a-half times as much as Detroiters pay. The figure is based on an annual household consumption of 60,000 gallons.

"It far exceeds what the United Nations designates as affordable for water and sewer service," said Mary Grant, one of the study's authors. The United Nations recommends that water and sewer service shouldn't exceed 3% of a household income. In Flint, the charges totaled about 7%, Grant said.

A Flint lawyer who sued to reduce the rates says they are high in part because city officials and state-appointed emergency managers have tapped water and sewer money for other needs.
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Guess we're waiting for the facts to come out before water boarding Synder and his cronies.
 
Dems: State ‘locked’ Flint into contaminated water

Democrats on Tuesday released copies of a $7 million state loan agreement designed to help end the city’s financial emergency. The document, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, includes a provision prohibiting the city of Flint from contracting with the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department without written approval from the state treasurer.

The loan agreement came a little over a month after the Flint City Council voted to switch off river water and return to Detroit’s Lake Huron supply.

The vote was symbolic because Flint was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager, Jerry Ambrose, who called the decision “incomprehensible” because of an estimated $12 million price tag.
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Emails voluntarily released last weekend by the Snyder administration show some of his top aides contemplated urging a return to Detroit water as early as October 2014, a full year before the state helped facilitate the change.

“To anyone who grew up in Flint as I did, the notion that I would be getting my drinking water from the Flint River is downright scary,” chief legal counsel Mike Gadola wrote in an Oct. 14, 2014, email sent to other aides, including Snyder’s chief of staff. “Too bad the (emergency manager) didn’t ask me what I thought, though I’m sure he heard it from plenty of others.”
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Clips from the House hearings were appalling. Partisan hacks grandstanding and screaming at their political opponents. 'Pubs screaming at the EPA and Dems screaming at MI Governor. Zero problem solving. How can they possibly not know Congress has a single digit approval rating (richly deserved) and still put on this ridiculous clown show?!?
 
The NPR story mentioned a Flint resident who attended the proceedings. She said she wasn't confident anything was accomplished. Her highlight was staying at the hotel and taking a shower and drinking water from a water fountain.
 
Chaffetz and/or Gowdy lecturing/screaming at people is obnoxious and unproductive. They're approaching Darrell Issa levels of showmanship.
 
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