We have been getting lots of questions about potential dangers of bathing or showering in lead contaminated water. This is really not a significant concern. A good reference on this subject states (emphasis added):

 Dust and soil that contain lead may get on your skin, but only a small portion of the lead will pass through your skin and enter your blood if it is not washed off. You can, however, accidentally swallow lead that is on your hands when you eat, drink, smoke, or apply cosmetics (for example, lip balm). More lead can pass through skin that has been damaged (for example, by scrapes, scratches, and wounds). The only kinds of lead compounds that easily penetrate the skin are the additives in leaded gasoline, which is no longer sold to the general public. Therefore, the general public is not likely to encounter lead that can enter through the skin.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/ToxProfiles/tp13-c1-b.pdf

 If anything, lead in water would tend to pose a lower risk than lead in dust or soil, because the lead has a strong tendency towards staying in the water.

In the last 25 years, I have only recommended that children not bathe in lead-contaminated water one time: for a case in Flint that was unusually bad where lead in water averaged over 2000 parts per billion for over 25 minutes of flushing. In the vast, vast majority of cases, there would not be a significant health concern from lead exposure due to bathing or showering in potable water.

In early April, Lee-Anne Walters discovered that one of her children was lead poisoned from exposure to extremely high levels of lead in the tap water of her Flint home. After she filed a complaint as directed by administrators, Flint decided to replace both the city owned and privately owned (Ms. Walters’) lead pipe in front of her home.

However, before replacing the lead pipe, the City attorney wanted her to sign a waiver that started like this:

I, Leeana Walters for the sole consideration of the replacement of a lead pipeline on my property

located at 212 Browning Street at a cost of One-Thousand-One Hundred Dollars ($1,1 00.00), to be

paid by the City of Flint, a Michigan municipal corporation, do, for and on behalf of myself, my survivors, heirs, legal representatives and assigns, hereby release and forever discharge the City of 

Flint, a Michigan municipal corporation, its officer, agents, employees, divisions, departments,

volunteers, boards, commissions and multiple member bodies, from any and all actions, causes of

action, claims and demands of whatsoever kind or nature on account of any and all known and

unknown injuries, losses and damages, by me sustained or received, and for any and all claims that I

had, now have or shall have by reason of, or being the subject matter related to the excavation and

installation of a replacement pipeline on my property located at 212 Browning Street and claims

stated in my damage claim (Exhibit 1).

This waiver was nearly two pages long, and the city told Ms. Walters that this waiver was routine procedure, and that if she wanted the lead pipe removed, she would have to sign it.

She refused to sign and the City ultimately decided to replace her lead pipe anyway. We wondered what other residents of Flint or any other US city would have done, if asked to sign such a statement, so as to get drinking water in their home that did not have astronomical levels of lead.

Download (PDF, 693KB)

In 2004, FLINTWATERSTUDY’s Dr. Marc Edwards was asked by (then MI State Senator) Virg Bernero to assist on a lead-in-water problem in Lansing, MI. The city’s water utility had been caught cheating on their Lead and Copper Rule monitoring requirements by manipulating the sampling — their failing lead-in-water report grade was changed into a passing grade. Sound familiar?

Incredibly, at the time, there was heated debate about whether elevated lead in water posed any health concern to children whatsoever. When confronted with decades of peer reviewed articles demonstrating that lead in water exposures could cause lead poisoning, especially amongst infants less than 1 year old, Michigan health officials repeatedly cited new research by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that indicated there was nothing to worry about.

The CDC had concluded that exposure to astronomical levels of lead in Washington D.C. drinking water, did not elevate the blood lead of any children over CDC levels of concern even in the “worst case” exposures. It took 6 years of volunteer work by scientists, D.C. citizens and a bi-partisan Congressional Investigation to reveal that this 2004 CDC report was “scientifically indefensible.”

To Bernero’s credit, he refused to rely on the flawed CDC study, and did not back down even when he was accused of creating a “lead scare.” After studying the problem thoroughly, he wrote:

I am today calling on our state and local public health officials, water utilities and state environmental regulators to cease and desist from their ongoing attempts to trivialize the importance of lead in drinking water as a possible source of lead poisoning in children. This nation’s scientific community long ago reached the conclusion that lead is a zero tolerance poison and that all sources of lead must be considered as a threat to the health of our children. … When it comes to the health of our children, we cannot afford to wait. We cannot afford to accept the baseless conclusions and bland assurances of those who refuse to accept, for whatever reason, that we need to be concerned about the presence of lead in drinking water. We must not delay. We must act now.

Today Lansing has become a national success story—they have fully replaced 15,500 of 17,000 lead service lines, and they have a firm plan to replace them all. However, the opportunity to learn anything from the tragedy in Washington DC, and prevent harm to children throughout the U.S., never really took root anywhere else.   Reasonably intelligent people can be forgiven for having trusted the CDC in 2004. Now that we have once again learned that elevated lead in water can cause elevated blood lead in children and adverse pregnancy outcomes, it is time to take the health threat from lead in water seriously and extend the Lansing model to the rest of the U.S.

The key elements of the proposed 2005 Michigan lead action plan were as follows:

Department of Environmental Quality

• Take immediate action to identify all communities in Michigan where lead service lines are still in use.
• Issue a water quality advisory to all such identified communities urging them to conduct profile tests as soon as practicable to determine if their lead service lines are leaching lead into drinking water at hazardous levels.

Department of Community Health

• Immediately review and revise the protocols for testing the tap water in homes where lead-burdened children have been identified.

Michigan Legislature

• Take prompt action on legislation to adopt new standards for lead testing of household tap water and require annual notification to all residents of homes where a lead service line is present.

U.S. Congress

• Require the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to expedite the revision of the Lead and Copper Rule to strengthen federal safe drinking water standards to protect the public from the hazards of lead-contaminated drinking water.
• Make additional funds available to the states to assist local communities in expediting the removal of lead service lines.

 The key elements of the JEFFORDS, SARBANES, NORTON & WAXMAN LEAD-FREE DRINKING WATER ACT (2005) would have:

• Required the EPA to revise the national primary drinking water regulations for lead in drinking water to ensure protection of vulnerable populations such as infants, children, pregnant women, and breast-feeding mothers;
• Required better notification for residents when a water system has high lead levels;
• Required increased water testing and lead remediation in schools and day-care centers nationwide;
• Provided more federal funding to upgrade water distribution systems;
• Banned plumbing components with elevated lead levels.

 Because we have been getting a lot of questions about the DC Lead Crisis and CDC’s lead in water work, we are also providing links to the complete 2010 Congressional Report “A PUBLIC HEALTH TRAGEDY: HOW FLAWED CDC DATA AND FAULTY ASSUMPTIONS ENDANGERED CHILDREN’S HEALTH” as well as Dr. Edwards written testimony at the 2010 Congressional hearing. We also make readers aware of the sacrifices made by several heroic whistleblowers who tried to alert the public to high lead in drinking water, activists who ran afoul of the CDC, and several DC citizens who labored for years (in vain) to hold government agencies accountable for the harm that was done to D.C.’s children.

Lead in the Water: If We Don’t Know, Can It Still Hurt Us? (see Pg. 2)

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Download (PDF, 930KB)

Download (PDF, 664KB)

Primary Author: Dr. Marc Edwards

Acknowledgements: Siddhartha Roy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Contact: Mitchell Rivard, 202-595-4885, [email protected]

Congressman Dan Kildee Calls for Investigation into Flint Water Woes

Kildee Demands Answers, Calls Flint Lead Levels “Failure of Government at Every Level”

FLINT – Congressman Dan Kildee (MI-05) today, in his ongoing work to achieve transparency and demand answers for Flint residents, wrote a letter to the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Gina McCarthy, calling for an investigation into the causes of the water problems in Flint. Congressman Kildee called for answers to questions related to EPA’s oversight of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and its oversight of state delegated authority that contributed to the water crisis. The letter can be viewed here.

“In order to restore confidence, and to ensure that these failures never happen again, I believe that the EPA needs to conduct a thorough investigation into the causes of the water problems in Flint. The failure of government to provide safe drinking water to Flint is unacceptable, and there must be accountability,” Congressman Kildee’s letter reads.

On Monday, the state of Michigan admitted for the first time that federal rules governing drinking water were not properly followed in Flint.

“Unfortunately, the citizens of Flint are the victims in this situation. They deserve a thorough investigation and answers to these questions,” Congressman Kildee said.

Last week, after Congressman Kildee called for federal technical advisors to come to Flint, the EPA established a task force to provide expertise to the city and state.

In March, Congressman Kildee asked the EPA to forgive loans made through the Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund in order to free up money to make water infrastructure improvements in Flint. He also has repeatedly fought for additional emergency assistance, including lead-clearing filters and bottled water, from the federal government until a long-term solution can be reached.

Dan Kildee’s letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy referenced above:

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Dan Kildee is the U.S. Representative for Michigan’s 5th Congressional District.