Skip to content

The tragedy of Flint is not what most people think it is

I've written many times about the Flint water crisis, and after all the data was in my conclusion was pretty simple:

  • The screw-up with Flint's water was a terrible tragedy that never should have happened.
  • However, in the end there was little damage done. Lead levels never got all that high and the problem was fixed fairly quickly. There were probably no more than a handful of children who were seriously affected.

To this day, conventional wisdom is just the opposite: namely that lead levels in children skyrocketed and produced a huge spike in special education. One of the scientists who was among the first to sound the alarm over Flint was transformed from hero to villain in a heartbeat when he declined to go along with this.

He's back now with some co-authors to take a retrospective look at what happened. Here's the key chart:

Even at the height of the crisis, testing in children showed blood lead levels that were essentially the same as the Michigan average and far lower than Detroit, which had a safe water supply the entire time. During the whole of the crisis (which encompassed 18 months in 2014-15), the number of Flint children with elevated lead levels was 3.9%. In Detroit it was 8.1%.

Why does this matter? It's simple: continual panic over a nonexistent crisis is bad for residents, who have lived for years with elevated outrage and stress, and bad for their children, who internalize the idea that they're going to grow up stupid.

But if the crisis was never that bad, what's with the spike in special education? That's what the new paper is about:

Did a nocebo effect contribute to the rise in special education enrollment following the Flint, Michigan water crisis?

A nocebo effect is when someone experiences a negative effect merely because they expect it, not because there's any concrete underlying cause. The authors conclude that this is indeed what happened in Flint:

Despite an equal number of overall special education outcomes worsening and improving, only those that superficially appeared to be worsening were publicized in the media. Our detailed analysis shows these outcomes are insignificant or inconsistent with the actual lead exposure that occurred. Specifically, the seven-fold jump in suspension/expulsion rates of special education students had occurred in 2013-14 before the onset of the crisis.

....A nocebo effect is consistent with the trend of rising special education enrollment after the [Flint water crisis] was exposed. As a top news story of 2016, the crisis engendered negative psychological effects described by residents as “Flint fatigue,” and the surrounding international media coverage has continued for over five years with negative headlines. The news reports and their popularity on social media and negative perceptions of Flint community leaders and parents could have heightened negative expectations about the effects on children, who readily accept and act on information from those they trust.

This is a tragedy on top of a tragedy. The damage done to children from lead was small, but the damage done from fear of lead may very well be many times higher. Partly this is because the progressive media persistently made heroes of the residents and refused to follow the science, and partly because Flint residents had every reason to distrust politicians and various hired guns who tried to belittle the crisis from the start.

With only a few exceptions, there's nothing wrong with Flint's kids. They should not have to grow up thinking there is.

14 thoughts on “The tragedy of Flint is not what most people think it is

  1. iamr4man

    Couldn’t it also be that with the social stigma of having a child who would benefit from special education removed (my child was fine until they drank the water) parents are more likely to admit their child has that need?

    1. Ken Rhodes

      I have no real data on that, but your hypothesis is totally plausible, and it is consistent with many similar human behaviors.

      BTW, I like your avatar. Is that an Affenpinscher?

    2. Eve

      Google paid 99 dollars an hour on the internet. Everything I did was basic Οnline w0rk from comfort at hΟme for 5-7 hours per day that I g0t from this office I f0und over the web and they paid me 100 dollars each hour. For more details
      visit this article... https://createmaxwealth.blogspot.com

    1. JimFive

      You're wrong about that. Detroit was also under a state appointed manager when they removed Flint's water connection.

  2. HalfAlu

    Kevin, I have to disagree that "...little damage done. Lead levels never got all that high". True, the attention the problem received led to a quick response that soon fixed the water, and the lead levels in children's blood began to decline.

    But when the lead issue was discovered, “Resident Zero”'s water had lead levels of 217–13,200 μg/L, 14X - 900X alarming levels (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b00791)!

    In the initial study, in 7 of the 9 Flint wards, > 20% of households had water lead levels > 15 ppb, the action level. In the worst wards, child blood lead levels were elevated in 11%, 9%, and 6% of children (https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2015.303003). In a quick search, I don't see how high blood lead levels rose in these kids.

    There were 17 months between the water switch and the start of corrective measures. The water lead issue was first identified in Feb 2015, and testing over the spring and summer raised greater and greater alarm as it became clear this was a widespread water issue, and then in Oct 2015 corrective measures were taken.

    Several thousand children <6 years old (of 9,000 in Flint) had significantly elevated blood lead levels for more than a year due to this poisoning.

    1. shapeofsociety

      Lead wasn't the only thing that got into the water due to the pipe corrosion. Lots of other stuff did too, and it made the water brown and yucky. Most people, quite naturally and reasonably, did not drink it! Even very poor people will shell out for bottled water, or drink other storebought beverages, if the tap water is obviously gross. The slight uptick in blood lead levels that we see in the chart was probably due to exposure during bathing, rather than drinking.

    1. samgamgee

      You know the media. Outrage sells. And politicians are adverse to being the guy saying there's not a problem, when everyone else thinks there is one. Easier to go with the flow and point fingers.

  3. golack

    I'm no mathematician, but...
    😉
    Averages vs distributions.
    That's not saying a lot of work need to be done in Detroit--it does.
    Also, the few cases you refer to are those with acute lead poisoning--which was the red flag that everyone was trying to ignore.
    It not just lead poisoning either. The outbreak of Legionaires disease at the time, which led to a number of deaths, was traced to problems withe the water.

    The problem of lead in the water was not as bad as some has made it out to be. Nor was it trivial, especially for those directly affected. The issue was compounded because testing can vary a lot--so low levels one day could be really bad the next--slow to start, did not always follow protocol and was haphazard. It was a case of Russian roulette--until the water supply was fixed. There's no test to say kids were or were not affected years ago (maybe analyze baby teeth?), so parents fear their kids were affected.

  4. cephalopod

    I was at a conference where one of the speakers (not a scientist, but a racial justice activist) put up a slide showing the rising rate of elementary students reading below grade level in Flint right after the eater crisis, and he said it was the effect of lead on their brains.

    And all I could think is "are you just measuring who has parents who are too poor to move away?"

Comments are closed.