0:00
*A sound effect of a running faucet is heard. After a few moments, the faucet is turned off, and the sound of rushing water ceases.*
0:09 – Julia
Think about the last time you had a glass of water. Do you know where it came from? Did you assume it was safe to drink? In 2014, the city of Flint, Michigan changed its water source from Detroit Water and Sewage to the Flint River, a decision which marked the very beginning of what we now know as the Flint water crisis. Seven years later, Flint is still without clean water, but attention around the issue has largely died down. People not directly impacted by the water crisis, while sympathetic, might view the issue as an isolated incident, unable to affect them, but it’s not just a Flint thing. Hi I’m Julia Peck.
0:47 – Noah
And I’m Noah Pinter. You may have heard my sister Sarah Pinter speak about her work in environmental sustainability in the previous episode.
0:54 – Julia
And in this episode, we’re going to discuss water safety in the state of Michigan. We expected to cover Flint in this episode, but, throughout our research, we discovered that lead contaminants in water is potentially a much larger issue than most people realize. In this episode, Noah and I sat down with our friend, Connor Jenkins, to learn about a research project he conducted in which he predicted lead contamination across the state of Michigan.
1:20 – Connor
Um, my name is Connor Jenkins, and I’m a senior studying Biology, Health, and Society at the University of Michigan, and I’m minoring in Water and The Environment. Through my minor is what I’m actually doing this research project for.
1:34 – Noah
Thank you so much for sitting down to talk with us today, Connor. I would like to start actually by discussing the stakes of this project. We’ve heard a lot about lead and water in the media in recent years, and I wanted to ask you: what is the problem with lead? What effects does it have on people?
1:52 – Connor
It’s listed as a possible carcinogen by the CDC, so it could cause cancer, but the big problem with lead is it creates a lot of developmental problems for kids, so the people most at risk of adverse effects of lead poisoning and lead exposure are children, and children who are exposed to lead have chronic issues for the rest of their life. There’s learning disabilities, there’s behavior problems, they don’t read as well, they don’t write as well, and that just affects the rest of your life. So the state of Michigan is very very bad about that whole thing. There was legislation surrounding lead testing in schools that was introduced recently after the Flint Water Crisis because there was an advisory committee that basically said, “maybe test your schools”. And so in 2018 a bill was introduced requiring testing after unsafe levels of lead were found in like 57 of 108 Detroit schools, or something insane like that. Um, but the bill has actually stalled in committee ever since 2018, so still, to this day, even though we’ve had like very clear results saying that lead is everywhere, there is still nothing that requires lead testing schools – which is bad *laughter*. Our kids are directly at risk, and also a lot of the buildings – a lot of the infrastructure of these buildings was made prior to the Safe Drinking Water Act, which was in 1986, and that was what actually banned lead pipes in schools. So basically, if your school was built in the 1970s or before, it probably has lead pipes, and you’re probably being exposed.
3:39 – Noah
So, taking a lot of the “science-y” stuff out of it, lead in water affects children?
3:45 – Connor
Yes.
3:46 – Noah
And Michigan is really bad at identifying where there is lead in water?
3:50 – Connor
Yeah, um, and it’s not just Michigan, it’s the entire United States, and the thing about lead exposure is that it is completely preventable. We still use lead pipes because they are in place already, and it’s really really really expensive to get them out because, if you try to get them out section by section, you end up damaging other sections, and more lead goes into the water. So, in order to remove lead pipes and the infrastructure that we already have in place, you have to remove all of it at once, which is billions and billions of dollars – so that’s not great. And there have been efforts to try to regulate and standardize lead testing across the United States because there are states that are better at it. Not a ton, but there are some. And actually, this is- this is kind of what got me going on the project is that the US government Accountability Office found that 41% of districts nationwide, which serves like 12 million students, had not tested for lead anytime in the last year, and the 43% of schools that did test for lead, 37% of those schools did find lead. And lead testing is only mandatory in eight states.
5:04 – Noah
So that’s disturbing information to hear, right? That this lead in water problem is bigger than just Flint, bigger than just the state of Michigan. This is affecting children all across the United States, and, by and large, as a country we’re failing to do anything about it. Especially – the notion of “we need to protect our children” I do not think is a partisan idea. It is clear that action needs to be taken. Why don’t we transition into talking about the actual methodology of the project itself? I know you expressed to me that you began by collecting a lot of prior data. Um, can you elaborate on that?
5:45 – Connor
Yeah, so the point of collecting the data was, um, in order to make a model to predict what zip codes were at risk in the state of Michigan, we had to use data that existed from other states that were better at lead testing. So, California is great. There’s very standardized, regulated testing procedures in place in California. New Jersey is also very good. And actually Ohio, as embarrassing as it is, is much better than Michigan. So, to get our project going, we decided to focus primarily on Ohio just because it has the most similarities with Michigan in terms of race proportions and infrastructure and environment and – yeah, so that was what the data was for basically: was to decide what state we were basing our model off of in order to make predictions.
6:46 – Noah
So you say “we”. Who’s “we”?
6:48 – Connor
Yeah! Um, I mentioned earlier that I am being mentored by Jason Duvall from PitE, who has been great, and also Dr. Colacino in the School of Public Health at The University of Michigan. Um, he’s helped me a lot so far. And then Eric Johnson, who is a data science major at the University of Michigan, has been incredibly incredibly helpful. Um, this project could not be done without him. He’s kind of the brains behind the operation.
7:18 – Noah
Is he the guy that we should talk to – like – in terms of inquiring how the data was processed?
7:25 – Connor
Um, that one we did together. The statistical analysis part he might be better at. I know a little bit about it. I can explain what the results mean basically.
7:39 – Noah
What were your findings?
7:41 – Connor
Yeah so basically, um, we used data from the US census and then also the public data warehouse that the state of Ohio has. Um, and we tried to find predictors for positive lead tests. So basically, we– we found the pure number of positive lead tests by zip code in Ohio, which took a lot of data cleaning and a lot of data finding, and then we just tried out predictors to see if we found any correlations. We tried five predictors in total, um, which were mortality rates, cancer incidence rates, race, poverty levels, and graduation rates. Um, and we only found correlation between three things: Race was correlated with the number of positive lead tests, poverty level was related to the number of positive lead tests, and cancer incidence was. So those three things are what we’re using– are the three predictors we’re using for our final model. Our final model is not done yet, but we do have– We haven’t basically put the Michigan data in yet – but we do have the model finished.
8:58 – Noah
And, pretty much, the conclusion is that poorer and browner communities are more likely to be, like, victims of lead poisoning?
9:06 – Connor
Yeah, that– that’s exactly it. If you increase the amount of non-white people in a zip code by 1%, you expect the number of positive lead tests to increase by 0.34 tests, which doesn’t sound insane. But, you know, if you increase a zip code by 10% of non-white people, you suddenly have almost two more positive lead tests. So you do expect more white zip codes to have much fewer positive lead tests.
9:39 – Noah
Do you know of, like, any actionable items that, like, listeners could take away? Like any policies or petitions that they could sign? Is there anything that we as, like, quote unquote “Michiganders” can do to help the state of Michigan?
9:56 – Connor
I think the most important thing right now is just, um, calling your representatives and demanding– cause there is legislation that’s just been stalled for years and years and years, and it’s because it’s an incredibly expensive task. So it just has not been prioritized by leaders so far because lead poisoning does not show up unless you test for it. So if you don’t test for it, it’s easy to sweep under the rug. So demand legislation. Um, Demand yearly (at least) testing, um, of all drinking sites– in schools especially. Cause you want to feel good when you send your kids to school. That is kind of the whole point is that there is a safe environment.
10:39 – Noah
You mentioned that your parents are educators. Do they– Have they dealt with– soft of– water crises stuff?
10:47 – Connor
I know the school that I went to is– is very underfunded and very poor and, you know, everyone in the school basically drinks from one drinking fountain. So the potential for lead exposure is not low, and it’s also an old building. Pipes could be up to 8% lead until 2014. So there’s still been pipes being installed and built that contained lead even after the Safe Drinking Water Act was passed. Basically, I mean we have crumbling infrastructure all over the United States, um, and there’s just lead everywhere. There’s lead paint I’m sure everyone’s heard about. So, it’s just everywhere, and we do need to be doing more to test it. And it’s all– it’s such a man-made problem that is so so preventable if the resources are given to people. And it’s always the people who are already at a disadvantage who are facing these exposures, whether it be because of race or income or socioeconomic status, which is why we’re kind of creating a heat map, is because we want to say with data, very explicitly, “these are the zip codes that we think are at risk, so focus legislation. Focus testing efforts. Rebuild infrastructure all in these specific sites, which we’ve identified for you.”
12:18 – Julia
To close out this episode, Noah and I want to take a moment to recognize our relationship with this issue. We’re students at the University of Michigan: a wealthy, primarily white institution. We’re not victims of lead contamination and have always had the luxury of not needing to worry about the water coming from our faucets. We aren’t ending this episode pretending that we’ve fixed this issue. We haven’t. As Connor suggested, the best thing all of us can do is contact our local representatives and demand annual water quality testing both in schools and everywhere else. In the spirit of raising awareness on this issue, we’ll conclude this episode by hearing testimonials by the communities affected by this problem. What follows are real recordings taken from public forums on the Flint water crisis. Thank you for listening.
13:06 – Voice #1 (Tiara Dansaw)
Who’s tired of this? Who’s tired of trying to fight for our human rights? Who’s tired of not being able to turn on your faucet and drink water? Who– Who’s tired of having to pay water so you can have something to drink in your house? Who’s tired of having to heat up your water so you can take a bath? This is enough.
13:40 – Voice #2 (Broghan MacIntyre)
I just want to point out that I have switched between three different schools in between this water crisis, and that’s crazy because I’ve switched three schools in the span of four years. And, coming from a personal note, I now have a rash from the water, so… it was covering my entire body, but now it’s just on my arms.
14:09 – Voice #3 (Keishaun Wade)
It was a deliberate decision by our elected officials that did not take into account our humanity or who we are as people. It poisoned us, and, again, it was a deliberate decision. Our government failed us. It’s simple.
