The numbers are in on the lead contamination of Flint, Michigan’s water in 2014–15, and it’s time for a sigh of relief.
Medically speaking, the lead in the water turned out to be a non-event.
The increase in lead content in children’s blood after the water debacle was small.
Tiny, in fact.
How tiny?
It was basically statistical noise: 0.11 micrograms per deciliter, which is within the range of normal fluctuation.
Two experts explain in the New York Times:
A similar increase of 0.12 micrograms per deciliter occurred randomly in 2010-11.
It is not possible, statistically speaking, to distinguish the increase that occurred at the height of the contamination crisis from other random variations over the previous decade.
...The authors of the Times piece note that 5 micrograms per deciliter is considered a “reference level.”
This isn’t the point at which someone’s health is in jeopardy, but merely a heads-up that it’s time to start exploring the environment to discover why the lead levels are elevated.
Before the changeover in the water supply, 2.2 percent of Flint children tested above the reference level.
After the changeover, that number rose, but only to 3.7 percent.
Just 20 years ago, in the late 1990s, when no celebrities were talking about the water in Flint, nearly 45 percent of the children there had lead levels above that point.
...Now let’s dial back the clock to the late 1970s, and previous decades, when cars used leaded gasoline and lead was everywhere.
Essentially all children in the Seventies were worse off than Flint children at the height of the crisis. In the late 1970s, 88 percent of U.S. children tested had double today’s reference level of lead in their blood — 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter.
In 2015, the worst year of the water problem in Flint, the average child tested had 1.3 micrograms of lead per deciliter.
That’s down almost half from the levels recorded as recently as 2006, when that figure was 2.33 micrograms of lead per deciliter in the city..."
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