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Flint, MI: So much lead in children’s blood, state of emergency declared

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Flint, MI: So much lead in children’s blood, state of emergency declared

#2
> Through continued demonstrations by Flint residents and mounting scientific evidence of the water’s toxins, city and state officials offered various solutions — from asking residents to boil their water to providing them with water filters — in an attempt to work around the need to reconnect to the Detroit system.

Can you boil lead out of water, or does it just become more concentrated?

Re: Flint, MI: So much lead in children’s blood, state of emergency declared

#3
post #2

> Through continued demonstrations by Flint residents and mounting scientific evidence of the water’s toxins, city and state officials offered various solutions — from asking residents to boil their water to providing them with water filters — in an attempt to work around the need to reconnect to the Detroit system. Can you boil lead out of water, or does it just become more concentrated?

Distillation would essentially be doing the reverse, "boiling the water out of the lead", and that would work. But no amount of boiling in a open pot is going to remove lead from your water.

It's hard to tell from the article, but the reference to boiling water might have been in response to the other issue mentioned, trihalomethanes in the water. As dissolved gases, boiling should help drive them out.

(side note: a trihalomethane is more commonly referred to as a haloform, which is the family chloroform comes from)

Re: Flint, MI: So much lead in children’s blood, state of emergency declared

#4
post #2

> Through continued demonstrations by Flint residents and mounting scientific evidence of the water’s toxins, city and state officials offered various solutions — from asking residents to boil their water to providing them with water filters — in an attempt to work around the need to reconnect to the Detroit system. Can you boil lead out of water, or does it just become more concentrated?

No, according to the CDC:

> Heating or boiling your water will not remove lead. Because some of the water evaporates during the boiling process, the lead concentration of the water can actually increase slightly as the water is boiled.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/wells/disea...

Re: Flint, MI: So much lead in children’s blood, state of emergency declared

#9
post #2

> Through continued demonstrations by Flint residents and mounting scientific evidence of the water’s toxins, city and state officials offered various solutions — from asking residents to boil their water to providing them with water filters — in an attempt to work around the need to reconnect to the Detroit system. Can you boil lead out of water, or does it just become more concentrated?

[deleted]

Re: Flint, MI: So much lead in children’s blood, state of emergency declared

#10
post #5

The article failed to explain how the river got so toxic in the first place.

From another source:

> "The Flint River has a history of poor water quality due to industrial pollution and agricultural runoff, according to an assessment by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. But efforts to remove pollutants and clean up the river have been successful in the past 40 years. Now, some are wondering if the problem lies in the city’s treatment of the water, which differs from its treatment of its previous water source, Lake Huron."

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/05/3666238/flint-mi...

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