What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City (One World Essentials)

by Mona Hanna-Attisha

I described the methodology and approach, how we had used data processed at Hurley Medical Center, received IRB approval for our research, and zeroed in on blood-lead levels of all children five years of age and younger in seven Flint zip codes. Two periods of study were compared: pre-switch blood-lead levels from January 1 to September 15, 2013, and post-switch levels during the same months of 2015. The sample used was 1,746 Flint children pre- and post-switch. Post-switch, the percentage of children with blood-lead elevation was almost double. I emphasized that this increase was contrary to every national and state trend. Elsewhere the percentage of kids with elevated lead levels had been coming down every year. Then I looked closely at water-lead levels in each zip code (based on Marc Edwards’s work), to prove a causal relationship. The zip codes with the highest water-lead levels saw the greatest increases in the percentage of children with elevated blood-lead levels. To show the dramatic contrast between Flint water pre- and post-switch, Jenny and I had created a few more graphs showing comparisons.