How a Pediatrician Became a Detective

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha playfully talked to 2-month-old patient Taeyana Brown who has had to drink only bottled water since her birth due to Flint’s ongoing water crisis. Photo: Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha exposed the lead poisoning of children in Flint, Michigan

FLINT, Mich. — Lead. It was real. I could see it in the blood of kids who visited my medical clinic here. It was the end of the summer of 2015, and children were being poisoned.

Ever since the city’s water source had been switched from Detroit’s municipal system to the Flint River 17 months before, residents had been complaining, holding meetings and organizing protests. Nothing was done about it.

A memo from the Environmental Protection Agency, reporting astronomical lead levels in the water, was leaked by a courageous insider. Still nothing was done. A national expert on the science of tap water found shocking levels of lead. Still nothing.

Lead is a neurotoxin that can cause irreversible damage to the brain. There is no safe level.

And yet kids and pregnant women were drinking the water. Babies were being fed formula that was mixed with the water. Mac and cheese was being made with the water. And the people in charge were covering up, stalling — or they truly didn’t care. Was it laziness or, worse, an indifference to poor black and brown people?

Michigan’s […]

Full article: How a Pediatrician Became a Detective