Evidence of lead contamination was dismissed as resulting from a laboratory refurbishment
An image showing Flint water bottles
Source: © Alamy Stock Photo
The signs were there – so why didn’t anyone in authority act sooner?
It was during a typical lab exercise in October 2014 that I knew something was really different about our water. Our undergraduate students at the University of Michigan–Flint were making copper sulfate solutions for a spectrophotometry exercise. But instead of clear blue, all their solutions were cloudy, even though we were using water purified by reverse osmosis. I knew that this could be bad: the only insoluble sulfate salts are lead, mercury (I), barium and calcium. It turned out to be evidence of the true nature of Flint’s nightmare.
Six months earlier, in April 2014, the city’s water supply was switched from the Detroit water and sewerage department to the Flint river. There had been immediate public complaints about water quality, and testing revealed unusually high levels of trihalomethanes (THMs) in the supply.