Author: Caitlin Proctor
I’d like to talk a bit about Flint. I suppose many of you have heard of the water crisis there (#FlintWaterCrisis), but if not, I’d encourage you to look it up. It’s been on the U.S. national news, BBC reported on it, and still the crisis continues, even with action by the National Guard.
Basically, the town in Michigan changed its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River for financial reasons. The change should have come along with an anti-corrosive addition during water treatment. Instead, the corrosive water eroded the iron water mains. The iron could be seen; the lead couldn’t. While people complained, there was no acknowledgement of the problem until Virginia Tech researchers tested and saw elevated lead levels (which, by the way, is downright poisonous for children).
The focus started with lead in the water. Then, there was the issue of the huge cover-up. Now, with reported higher levels of Legionnaire’s Disease in Flint, there is concern that the same problems that caused high lead levels also elevated a microbial risk.
In a paper we published last year, we talked a lot about a microbial continuum in drinking water from source to tap. It being a flow-through system, however, this is not only a microbial continuum, but also a chemical one. Anything that happens upstream affects the entire downstream system. The Virginia Tech team’s NSF Rapid grant hopes to explore this particular problem further.
Engineers go to school for many years to learn about these connections, learn how to treat the water properly, and learn how to test that everything is working. Maybe not all the problems Flint faced were foreseeable, but there wasn’t an effort to look for the problems, either. Decisions were made for financial reasons, and safety was overlooked. Hence, even in a developed country, where we have ‘everything figured out’, the system can fail.
It came down to scientists, much like the audience of this blog, to speak up for the public’s safety. We have the responsibility to be vigilant for problems in the drinking and waste water industry that we’re becoming experts on, and to do just the same when we see them.
The Virginia Tech Research team led by Dr. Marc Edwards, Dr. Amy Pruden and Dr. Joseph Falkinham III is doing a great job of reporting the science and informing the public, and I highly encourage you to check out their website.
Originally posted here.
I’d like to talk a bit about Flint. I suppose many of you have heard of the water crisis there (#FlintWaterCrisis), but if not, I’d encourage you to look it up. It’s been on the U.S. national news, BBC reported on it, and still the crisis continues, even with action by the National Guard.
Basically, the town in Michigan changed its water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River for financial reasons. The change should have come along with an anti-corrosive addition during water treatment. Instead, the corrosive water eroded the iron water mains. The iron could be seen; the lead couldn’t. While people complained, there was no acknowledgement of the problem until Virginia Tech researchers tested and saw elevated lead levels (which, by the way, is downright poisonous for children).
The focus started with lead in the water. Then, there was the issue of the huge cover-up. Now, with reported higher levels of Legionnaire’s Disease in Flint, there is concern that the same problems that caused high lead levels also elevated a microbial risk.
In a paper we published last year, we talked a lot about a microbial continuum in drinking water from source to tap. It being a flow-through system, however, this is not only a microbial continuum, but also a chemical one. Anything that happens upstream affects the entire downstream system. The Virginia Tech team’s NSF Rapid grant hopes to explore this particular problem further.
Engineers go to school for many years to learn about these connections, learn how to treat the water properly, and learn how to test that everything is working. Maybe not all the problems Flint faced were foreseeable, but there wasn’t an effort to look for the problems, either. Decisions were made for financial reasons, and safety was overlooked. Hence, even in a developed country, where we have ‘everything figured out’, the system can fail.
It came down to scientists, much like the audience of this blog, to speak up for the public’s safety. We have the responsibility to be vigilant for problems in the drinking and waste water industry that we’re becoming experts on, and to do just the same when we see them.
The Virginia Tech Research team led by Dr. Marc Edwards, Dr. Amy Pruden and Dr. Joseph Falkinham III is doing a great job of reporting the science and informing the public, and I highly encourage you to check out their website.
Originally posted here.