DECEMBER 2015

water warrior
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha stands up for Flint
BY JOYCE WISWELL
Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha still
finds the whole Flint water
crisis hard to believe.
“In the middle of the Great Lakes,
in 2015, we have poisoned a population,”
she said. “It’s shocking.”
The director of Hurley Medical
Center’s Pediatric Residency Program
is not exaggerating when talking
about the scandal of Flint’s water.
In April 2014, the city’s emergency
manager switched from the Detroit
Water System to water from the
Flint River to save money. Though
residents immediately began complaining
about the funny look and
bad taste of the water coming from
their taps, the state kept insisting everything
was fine. But the river’s corrosive
water was allowing lead from
the pipes to leach in.
Hanna-Attisha, whose background
is in public health, wasn’t
buying it, especially after a Virginia
Tech researcher said the water contained
an undeniable presence of
lead. That prompted Hanna-Attisha
to compare blood level test results
for 1,746 children in Flint before and
after April 2014 – and find that the
percentage of kids with elevated levels
of lead had doubled.
“We have gotten the lead out of
paint and out of gas, and every year
the percentage of children with it
decreases. To see an increase was
shocking,” she said. “But when we
announced the results, the state
called me ‘an unfortunate researcher
causing near hysteria,’ an ‘irresponsible
researcher.’”
Hanna-Attisha was horrified –
not only by the presence of lead but
by the state’s stubborn insistence
that the water was safe.
“When you do research you’re always
paranoid — you check, double
check, triple check. The numbers
don’t lie. But when the state says
you’re wrong, you second guess yourself.
I was physically ill,” she said.
“After about a week of criticizing
the work and finally after some good
conversations with some intelligent
people at the state, they realized how
to look at the data and they realized
their numbers were the same,” she
added. “Before that, it was just deny,
deny, deny.”
Local public health officials declared
a public health emergency on
October 1, and the state admitted to
the lead problem the next day. Flint
was switched back to Detroit’s water
system (it plans to join a new system
that gets water from Lake Huron
next year) but the water is still being
piped into homes and businesses via
the city’s old corroded pipes.
On October 15, the state legislature
unanimously passed a bill allocating
$9.3 million to address the
crisis. The city will put corrosion
control agents in the water it buys
from Detroit to help reduce damage
caused to water mains and service
lines. There is another effort underway
in the legislature to allocate $50
million to replace lead service pipes
and provide support and educational
services for children poisoned by the
water.
(And, in continuing fallout, Flint
Mayor Dayne Walling — who had
also insisted the water was safe — was
voted out of office on Election Day
by newcomer Karen Weaver, who
pledges to “rebuild trust” between
residents and their government.)
Hanna-Attisha, a first-generation
Chaldean American, said she hopes
to see legal action on behalf of Flint’s
citizens, who used lead-poisoned water
for more than 16 months.
“People need to go to jail – this
was criminal,” she said. “If I am in
the OR and have a bad outcome I
lose my license and I get sued. This
was clear, irresponsible neglect and
I believe there will be criminal investigations.
There’s been tampering
with data, discarding some samples.
In addition to her medical degrees, Mona Hanna-Attisha has a master’s in public health
and is a former assistant professor at Wayne State University’s Department of Pediatrics.
And it took evidence that children
were being poisoned for anything to
happen.”
Such a disaster would never happen
in a wealthy suburb, Hanna-Attisha
maintains.
“There is a 40 percent poverty
rate in Flint vs. 16 percent for the rest
of the state. This would only happen
in communities like Flint that are already
disenfranchised. It would never
happen in Bloomfield Hills. These
people are so beat down, and then
you give them lead. Just because you
have no money doesn’t mean you are
not entitled to safe drinking water.
If you deliberately wanted to put a
poison in a population to keep them
down, this is what you would do. I
don’t believe it was deliberate, but it
was highly preventible.”
Lead, she explained, is an irreversible
toxin directly linked to violent
offenses, and even small amounts can
cause serious health problems. Children
under the age of 6 are especially
vulnerable to lead poisoning and can
suffer problems in both mental and
physical development.
Lead poisoning causes genetic
changes that last generations. The
effects of the poisoned water will
have repercussions for decades, said
Hanna-Attisha.
“In five years we will likely see
an increase of children who need
special education services,” she said.
“In 10 years we will likely see more
kids with behavior problems and increased
diagnoses of ADHD. In 15
years, we will see more problems in
the criminal justice system. All these
costs are in the multiple billions.”
That’s why, she said, it is essential
that everyone from federal and state
governments to private foundations
join forces to help Flint’s residents,
particularly its children. Hanna-
Attisha is part of the newly formed
Flint Lead Innovation Team, which
the state has assembled to combat
the effects of lead poisoning. This includes
pushing good nutrition (notoriously
lacking in poor populations),
increased early-intervention programs
like Head Start and long-term
follow-ups with physicians.
“We have a really unique opportunity
to build a model health
program where we can buffer these
kids so we don’t see these terrible
consequences,” said Hanna-Attisha.
“But it will take a lot of resources. I’m
angry, but I’m using that to do some
of the secondary prevention work.
Our community has been physically
traumatized and they think that every
kid has been damned. We need
to give them hope.”
Hanna-Attisha, the mother of
two, has taken on hero status as the
water scandal continues to make
news. Her ignored warnings about
the water and refusal to give up has
led to interviews with media as diverse
as the BBC and Al-Jazeera.
“It’s been absolutely surreal – one
day I had seven media interviews. It’s
gone international,” she said of her
newfound fame. “I came to work in
Flint to do pediatric public health.
It’s like this was destined for me to
do this.”
34 CHALDEAN NEWS DECEMBER 2015