After Flint, Mich., switched from purchasing water via Detroit to sourcing locally from the Flint River, residents began noticing a change in water quality. One resident—Lee Anne Walters—suspected the water might be toxic, and had her water tested for lead. She brought samples to Marc Edwards, an environmental engineer at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a world-renowned expert on water treatment. He found lead levels in her tap water at 13,200 parts per billion; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sounds the alarm at 15 ppb. She subsequently discovered her three-year-old son had blood lead levels so high that he was considered lead poisoned. In fact, researchers estimated 4 percent of all Flint’s children five and under had elevated blood lead--a percentage almost double that seen before the switch to the Flint River water.
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They repeatedly found unsafe lead levels in the drinking water. They discovered that if Flint had been using an anticorrosion agent like orthophosphate minerals to coat city pipes, the lead crisis may have been averted. (Watch a Scientific American video about Flint's lead pipe corrosion.) Furthermore, Edwards’s team uncovered the widespread use of lead testing practices that deviated from EPA protocol—Flint residents were encouraged to “pre-flush” the pipes before each lead test, which would decrease the amount of lead reading in the test
They repeatedly found unsafe lead levels in the drinking water. They discovered that if Flint had been using an anticorrosion agent like orthophosphate minerals to coat city pipes, the lead crisis may have been averted. (Watch a Scientific American video about Flint's lead pipe corrosion.) Furthermore, Edwards’s team uncovered the widespread use of lead testing practices that deviated from EPA protocol—Flint residents were encouraged to “pre-flush” the pipes before each lead test, which would decrease the amount of lead reading in the test