Today’s blog, written by Keshika Vasuja from HealthNeedsRx, is going to shed some light on the subdued crisis in Flint, Michigan. The ongoing water quality crisis in Flint, Michigan highlights many public health issues, but shines its brightest light on health disparities. The Flint water crisis is a public health crisis that started in 2014, after the drinking water source for the city of Flint, Michigan was changed. In April 2014, Flint changed its water source from treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water (sourced from Lake Huron and the Detroit River) to the Flint River. Officials failed to apply corrosion inhibitors to the water. As a result, lead from aging pipes leached into the water supply, leading to extremely elevated levels of the heavy metal neurotoxin and exposing over 100,000 residents to elevated lead levels.
functioning—all of which undermine individuals’ and communities’ long-term productivity, cohesion and happiness. While most Americans understand now that less wealth means less access to education, stability and opportunity, Flint makes the deeper long-term consequences of inequality crystal clear.
But Flint is not the only place where lead is keeping people down. The problem of lead poisoning is pervasive in America’s inner cities, from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., to New York. Levels of lead in the soil in D.C.’s historically low-income Stadium Armoury neighbourhood, for example, were found to be nearly 10 times the accepted safety standard of other rich, developed countries (e.g. Norway). Baltimore, which suffers some of the nation’s worst inequality, also has its own lead bias: The percentage of black households with dangerous levels of lead has increased, while the percentage of white households has decreased. And in the poor neighbourhoods of both D.C. and Baltimore, antiquated housing’s lead paint chips remain a serious hazard for kids.
“People who live in Bloomfield Hills or Birmingham don’t have these problems because these are wealthy communities where folks can afford to replace their plumbing, where the cities have plenty of tax revenue to upgrade infrastructure, and where – when problems start to emerge – they can certainly call their state legislators and command their respect and attention,” Nancy Kaffer, a political columnist for the Detroit Free Press. said during the January 20 interview. “The response would have been different, but it doesn’t happen in an affluent community to begin with because there’s so much disparity in investment in infrastructure in this country based on where people live and how wealthy the community is,” she added. Environmental inequality is a potent and pervasive threat to opportunity in America. From mountaintop mining that decimates and contaminates the local air and water supplies of poor rural communities in Appalachia, to the disadvantaged communities that suffer the noxious and poisonous by-products from discarded toxic technology, coal or chemical plants, and oil refineries, the problem is deep and wide. But lead isn’t the only artefact of inequality that’s locking in poverty. Concentrated polluting industries in Baltimore have, for decades, correlated strongly with low-income neighbourhoods and low-educational attainment. In New York City, excessive moisture in Housing Authority buildings, which house more than 400,000 city residents, have resulted in severe problems with toxic mould, which causes not only asthma but also chronic fatigue and a range of potential cognitive impairments. No matter the city, the connection between income inequality and its accompanying health inequalities (and cognitive and developmental inequalities) is clear. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, speaking at a press conference while in Washington, D.C. while attending a meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, noted the impact of the crisis on children’s health and the frustrating uncertainty her constituents face over a basic access to clean water. When asked whether the lead contamination and ensuing crisis would have happened in a different community, she said, “We know Flint is predominantly African American, but it’s also a social issue. It’s a class issue as well and we’ve got high unemployment.” While Snyder has pledged action, and the Obama administration responded with an emergency declaration for federal resources, Flint residents still can’t drink the water as they wait for chemicals to build back up and coat pipes after officials switched the city back to Detroit water. “Do you know how much water you use every day to drink, to cook, to make formula for your infant if you have one? Think about how much water you would require to get through the day and having to have all that be bottled,” Nancy Kaffer told MSNBC. “Even with filters, some folks in Flint have said to me they’re never going to feel safe drinking tap water ever again, which is a pretty horrible thing to think about in America, the richest country in the world.” But there’s hope: Flint can serve as a national wakeup call to the fact that we need to properly monitor, regulate and remediate. We also need to increase access to nutritious food, quality healthcare and excellent education. That’s because these inequalities compound each other. The absence of nutritional necessities in food deserts like Flint increases vulnerability to environmental risks like lead or toxic mould, and the absence of access to quality education preys on the cognitive impacts from lead or mould. Works Cited: https://time.com/4212941/flint-and-inequality/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://healthjournalism.org/blog/2016/01/how-the-flint-water-crisis-has-further-exposed-health-disparities/
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Welcome to our blog, Medquity!Here we will post extra articles on health disparities to display the profound health inequities in our healthcare system. These are updated every other weekend, so check back regularly! Archives
July 2021
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