I would posit they have been poisoned, just because we are loath to admit something doesn't make it less true.
> It is not possible, statistically speaking, to distinguish the increase that occurred at the height of the contamination crisis [in Flint] from other random variations over the previous decade.
Whereas;
> Right now in Michigan, 8.8 percent of children in Detroit, 8.1 percent of children in Grand Rapids and an astounding 14 percent of children in Highland Park surpass the C.D.C. reference level. Flint is at 2.4 percent.
By those numbers Flint was, apparently, another media manufactured hysteria which happen to fit the desired narrative and drive a lot of clicks.
There seems to be an endemic propensity of current mass media to run away with the facts in an effort to see who can express the most virtuous outrage and bring some chosen enemy-of-the-people to justice.
When those in media begin to feel like their job is not so much fact finding as it is to “protect democracy” or some-such, the news writers seem to start acting like over-zealous prosecutors instead of neutral truth seekers.
The problems in Flint could be traced directly to an erroneous decision by the Michigan state government to use the Flint river water without introducing anti-corrosion chemicals into it (thus causing corrosion of the existing, safe lead pipes). This creates a clear narrative of good and evil which is attractive to the media.
Other cities suffering from lead problems are often due to legacy lead paint or lead pipes installed on homeowner’s property. It’s much harder to see a narrative in that rather than an existing, systemic problem which would not be seen as newsworthy.
The last time something like Flint happened was the CDC coverup of lead contamination in the Washington, D.C. water system almost 2 decades ago, which did receive national attention although not as much as Flint has. (One could speculate as to the reasons why)
It's great that relatively few children seem to be harmed. It's also true that the city, state and American Red Cross delivered bottled water and filters to the people likely to be most significantly affected.
The numbers matter. Our units today are grams of lead per liter of blood. These children had an increased blood-lead content of 1.2 x 10^-7. One study I found[1] cites a IQ loss of 1.5 points for each 5 x 10^-6. Only the extreme outliers - a percentage point of children - passed that level. That's not nothing, but I would bet (without evidence) that concussions/head injuries from High School Football causes greater IQ loss on average.
Lots of factors, fair and unfair, affect how our lives turn out. This one was unfair. It sucked. There are far bigger fish to fry.
[1]https://today.duke.edu/2017/03/lead-exposure-childhood-linke...
I'd claim that the lead poisoning from leaded gas caused more issues to the population than Flint's water crisis or the 70's Detroit water did.
There may have been a severe decline in productivity (and peacefulness, well-being, etc). It's easy to see acute direct effects of poisoning; it's really hard to know for sure if these levels of lead exposure caused violent crime, but people have made a plausible argument that they did. See wikipedia:
> A 2007 report published by The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, authored by Jessica Wolpaw Reyes of Amherst College, found that between 1992 and 2002 the phase-out of lead from gasoline in the U.S. "was responsible for approximately a 56% decline in violent crime". — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-crime_hypothesis
I don't care what word folks use, but I think there's enough evidence of negative consequences that we should ensure that the lead exposure of the '70s is never repeated—in Flint, in the other cities the article mentioned, or anywhere else.
No, which is part of the point of this article. They are not a generation of brain damaged people, nor are the kids of flint brain damaged and requiring immediate medical attention. Calling them such is harmful for multiple reasons, some of which the article stated.
Another point is that even due to this, lead levels in the people of flint have fallen from 11.x to 3.x percent as per the article.
They don't argue it's not a problem, but they disagree with the hysteria. Not the facts.
And they try to define the length of exposure to when the water source was changed. That might be true but they can’t know that. And it’s likely not true, a water system with lead pipes will have specified an acceptable lead level that can be present in safety samples. Even though there is no safe level.
Since the logic of the system does not permit individuals to present the damage done to them in material terms that describe the reality of their own experiences, not only is it untrue for them, it’s historically untrue for all similar cases.