Lead and Lasting Damage: The Flint Water Crisis 10 Years Later

From April 2014 to June 2016, a crisis occurred in Flint, Michigan, due to human-made measures to deliver water to residents (Ray 2026). On April 25, 2014, the state switched Flint’s water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River to cut costs (Kwong et al. 2024). However, the corrosion control treatments were also dropped alongside the change, and to make matters worse, ferric chloride was added to the treatment plan, which only increased the corrosivity of the river (Bellinger 2016, 1102). The water was now 19 times more corrosive than it was before, so lead started leaching into the water from the outdated pipes (Bellinger 2016, 1102). 100,000 residents were affected by the crisis, and officials had initially denied the claims of increased lead despite traces in children’s blood (Kwong et al. 2024; Ray 2026).

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Each element absorbs light at its own set of wavelengths, and the amount absorbed can reveal how much is present (Olson et al. 2017, 358). Researchers at Michigan State University used inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to analyze old pipes from Flint and estimated that 2.7 grams of lead was lost per meter of pipe (Olson et al. 2017, 358). The researchers estimated around 18 grams of lead would enter a home’s water over 17.5 months, but no amount of lead exposure is safe, especially for children (Olson et al. 2017, 358; Bellinger 2016, 1102). Lead is particularly dangerous for the brain because it deceives the body by posing as calcium, which then enters the neurons through calcium channels and stops any real calcium from entering the channels (Turrentine 2023). Calcium helps produce brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which aids in the development of memory and learning (Turrentine 2023). Furthermore, it makes children most vulnerable, as their brains are forming millions of new connections every second, so lead has more opportunities to interrupt neurotransmission and affect their growth (Turrentine 2023).

​10 years later, data from the Flint Registry, which tracks over 21,000 participants, reveals that 15% of children were diagnosed with anxiety and 10% with depression, nearly double national rates (Riley 2024). Furthermore, children were given 7,500 dollars from RX Kids to improve calcium, iron, and vitamin C nutrition, as it inhibited lead absorption (Kwong et al. 2024; Riley 2024). Michigan also expanded Medicaid coverage for Flint children’s psychological care, and clinics offered neuropsychological assessments and lead testing (Riley 2024). In July of 2024, the state announced they completed replacing all the old lead-filled pipes, but days later the city found 3200 addresses skipped, and many families, even those with replaced pipes, are still relying on bottled water today (Rogin and Yang 2024). Despite awareness of the danger of lead pipes, major cities in America continue to have lead pipes, risking seeping into water systems like Chicago, where 400,000 homes get water through lead pipes (Kwong et al. 2024). Powered by cost-cutting measures, Flint’s crisis exposed the environmental injustice where science showed the dangers of the pipes, yet America is still using many even 10 years later.

References

Bellinger, David C. 2016. “Lead Contamination in Flint — An Abject Failure to Protect Public Health.” New England Journal of Medicine 374 (12): 1101–1103.https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1601013.

Kwong, Emily, Pien Huang, Rachel Carlson, and Rebecca Ramirez. 2024. “10 Years After Flint, the Fight to Replace Lead Pipes Across the U.S. Continues.” Short Wave, NPR, April 26, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1198909905/flint-water-lead-poisoning-anniversary-chicago.

Olson, Terese M., Madeleine Wax, James Yonts, Keith Heidecorn, Sarah-Jane Haig, David Yeoman, Zachary Hayes, Lutgarde Raskin, and Brian R. Ellis. 2017. “Forensic Estimates of Lead Release from Lead Service Lines during the Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan.” Environmental Science & Technology Letters 4 (9): 356–361. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.estlett.7b00226.

Ray, Michael. 2026. “Flint Water Crisis.” Encyclopædia Britannica, October 18, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/event/Flint-water-crisis.

Riley, Shantal. 2024. “The Children of Flint, Ten Years Later.” Harvard Public Health Magazine, April 25, 2024. https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/the-children-of-flint-ten-years-later/.

Rogin, Ali, and John Yang. 2024. “10 Years After Flint, the Fight to Replace Lead Pipes Across the U.S. Continues.” Interview with Erik Olson. PBS News Hour, July 2024. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/flint-removes-thousands-of-lead-pipes-in-major-milestone-but-these-problems-remain.

Turrentine, Jeff. 2023. “How Exactly Does Lead Exposure Harm the Brain?” Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), September 28, 2023. Updated October 2024. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/how-exactly-does-lead-exposure-harm-brain.