51–60 of 332 posts
What institutional failure led to this? It seems like this has been a long time coming. Why has the leadership of the area allowed this to happen?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The toxicity of lead is actually a longstanding political argument in the US. Lobbying against lead regulation was one of the original motivations for the development of modern american libertarianism. Even fairly recently libertarian organisations like the Cato Institute have been fighting against regulation of lead and against compensation for those poisoned. When the topic of lead comes up on HN you often get comm…
> Even fairly recently libertarian organisations like the Cato Institute have been fighting against regulation of lead and against compensation for those poisoned. That's shocking and tragically sad.
There's a very disturbing correlative graph between the banning of anti-knock lead additives from gasoline and the drop in violent crime rates in the United States. Correlation does not imply causation, but in this case it points feverishly at causation while wiggling its eyebrows and nodding its head suggestively.
> 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...
What led to this particular situation was apparently rate hikes in the Detroit water system, which caused Flint to switch to using the Flint river as their water source last year. Beyond that, water systems all over the country are in bad shape. Because water rates are subject to public control, they are far too low and there is a huge under-investment in water systems: http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/dr…
Subtly attempts to frame the issue as public controlled water. A counterpoint might be that the companies with a vested interest in privitising water supplies have lobbied to choke out the public systems of funding. Perhaps instead of cutting deplorable tax breaks for big business, it would be more prudent to augment the public funds to prevent your citizens from getting lead poisoning? http://www.theguardian.com/glo…
In the context of Flint, this argument ends up a bit moot; there's no money, anywhere. Private, public, doesn't matter, the city can't sustain itself as it is. Flint has way more infrastructure than it can support. And "evaporative cooling" is in full effect; anyone who can leave, is leaving or more likely has left. As I live in the Ann Arbor area, I can name names. Flint is a popular place to be from.
A State of Emergency and the resulting external emergency assistance is the only way out of this mess for Flint, regardless. This is especially important if the recent theories about how dangerous lead poisoning is are true, with the suggestions that the majority of the cause of the crime wave in the 60s and 70s may have been due to leaded gasoline. Leading up the next generation of Flint residents could make things even harder for the city for the next 30-50 years, and Flint really doesn't need that.
I particularly like the comments to that article stating that only "liberals" believe the water supply is heaving with lead. The ridiculous political bun-fight infects everything, it seems. It's a mental disease.
The toxicity of lead is actually a longstanding political argument in the US. Lobbying against lead regulation was one of the original motivations for the development of modern american libertarianism. Even fairly recently libertarian organisations like the Cato Institute have been fighting against regulation of lead and against compensation for those poisoned. When the topic of lead comes up on HN you often get comm…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The toxicity of lead is actually a longstanding political argument in the US. Lobbying against lead regulation was one of the original motivations for the development of modern american libertarianism. Even fairly recently libertarian organisations like the Cato Institute have been fighting against regulation of lead and against compensation for those poisoned. When the topic of lead comes up on HN you often get comm…
But... to argue lead is nontoxic is counterfactual!
But being able to argue it isn't toxic enough to necessitate a change in behavior is what makes a politician's career. Everything is toxic in the right quantity. ;)
https://www.google.com/maps/place/43%C2%B003'25.2%22N+83%C2%...
I'm glad to see this on HN. Flint is often a forgot about place in the world. I grew up there and now live outside of Flint. My dad was murdered there. But I always think Flint is prime for opportunity. The people need basic essentials, water, food, shelter. But the infrastructure to build factories is there. Power, train lines, the whole deal. It's really a shame. The sad part is, the people are still hell bent on s…
Flint is often a forgot about place in the world. Not since Michael Moore immortalized it. I wouldn't be surprised if many people upvoting this story were making an association with Roger & Me .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. Distillation should remove any heavy metal elements. It's not ideal to consume long term, as it removes most useful minerals and results in a hydrogen-heavy/acidic water, but it's certainly far better than consuming lead.
> hydrogen-heavy/acidic water, but it's certainly far better than consuming lead. Yeah, but why would a water with slightly acidic pH be a major problem for health anyway? Numerous mineral waters sold on the market at not at pH 7 in the first place.
> 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?
You can't boil lead out of water, in the same way that you can't boil salt out of water. Metal extraction is a pretty hard problem. It seems that you can reduce the levels of the aforementioned trihalomethane compounds by boiling though. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/959480