Source: Washington Post
Children today are suffering the most from high levels of lead in the Flint River in Flint, Michigan. High levels of lead found in the river today are largely a result of America’s historical reliance on lead to run giant industrial products, such as toy industries, piping for irrigation systems, home and car fuel. General Motors in fact relied heavily on lead to manufacture its competitive new fuel decades ago.
For the past decades, Flint River was an outlet for industry waste, containing “large amounts of all sort of toxins”– including lead. Because Flint River has been such a huge water resource for Flint homes, lead has made its way into more home water systems and ultimately into human systems, especially children. Children are especially susceptible because they are still growing and because they are more likely to ingest lead through hand and mouth contact as they play in the dirt.
According to the Washington Post, children in low-income homes and neighborhoods suffer from high levels of lead in their systems because these are normally older homes that have not yet been stripped of lead paint and piping and they are located in areas with high traffic and exposure to lead-burning cars. According to the CDC, there is no “safe level” of lead content in the body system and chronic exposure to lead can lead to lead poisoning and ultimately learning incompetence.
Read full article at: Washington Post