FLINT WATER CRISIS

CDC confirms kids' blood-lead levels went up in Flint

Todd Spangler
Detroit Free Press

WASHINGTON — Federal health investigators released a report on Friday that reached the same conclusion a Flint-area doctor did nearly a year ago — that blood-lead levels among children jumped dramatically after the city switched water supplies — though they now say those numbers are dropping.

Mike Henry Sr. of Grand Blanc holds his grandson Kaiden Olivares, 3, as he screams while giving a blood sample to be tested for lead on Saturday January 23, 2016 at the Masonic Temple in downtown Flint. 'I'm upset I had to do that to him,' Henry Sr. said who moved with his family outside of the city to Grand Blanc. 'My grandson has had rashes. He's been in the hospital. We have a concern now about the hospital's water. My daughter has hair loss in the past that we've had no clue. We're just trying to find out if maybe that's it. Our whole family resides in Flint. We've ate in Flint. We've drank water in Flint. We've been in Flint restaurants so we have high concern.'

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s results indicated that during the 18 months the city was using the Flint River as its water source, the likelihood that a child’s blood-lead level would be more than 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood was nearly 50% higher than before the switch in April 2014.

The findings largely tracked those reported last September by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician at Hurley Children’s Hospital in Flint, who looked at blood test results and found the number of children with elevated lead levels had jumped from 2.1% to 4% and was even higher in certain areas of the city.

Hannna-Attisha’s report was considered a watershed moment in drawing attention to the then-growing public health crisis in Flint, where lead started leaching out of old lead water pipes into residents’ taps when the city switched water sources without being required by the state to also use corrosion control. Hanna-Attisha was traveling and unavailable for comment Friday.

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“This crisis was entirely preventable and a startling reminder of the critical need to eliminate all sources of lead from our children’s environment,” Patrick Breysse, director of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health, said in a statement along with Friday’s report.

For their study, CDC investigators looked at more than 9,400 blood samples to draw data about blood-lead levels in children under age 6 living in Flint. They found that in the year prior to the city’s switch to the Flint River in April 2014, 3.1% of children had blood-lead levels of more than 5 micrograms per deciliter, which is considered elevated.

In the eight months following the switch to using Flint River water, however, that number jumped to 5%.

After a water advisory was issued on Jan. 2, 2015, for high levels of trihalomethanes, a byproduct of disinfectants, elevated blood-lead levels dropped somewhat to about 4% of those tested, possibly because it reduced overall tap water consumption, but it didn’t drop precipitously until late last year, when the city switched back to Detroit water after independent experts warned of high lead levels found in the water.

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Since switching back to its previous water supply from the Detroit Water and Sewerage system in October and parents were cautioned to have children drink bottled water until it was determined the local water supply was safe, the percentage of children under 6 in Flint with elevated levels has dropped to 1.4.%, below what it was even before the city switched water supplies.

The crisis in Flint has led state, local and federal officials to call for all parents to have their children screened for lead poisoning, the effects of which are often considered permanent and can lead to developmental and behavioral problems. Health care and diet can mitigate the damage.

Researchers cautioned that their study had limitations, however, and they were unable to account for other factors — such as lead-based paint in homes — which could have contributed to a child’s exposure. 
Researchers also did not have any information on how much contaminated water — or the amount of lead in that water — might have been consumed by individual children.

On Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the CDC announced that NSF International-certified water filters have been found to remove lead from water even above their rating of 150 parts per billion and that it is safe for nursing and pregnant women, as well as children in Flint, to drink properly filtered water.

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Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947 or tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler.