How the Flint water crisis set students back
When the Flint water crisis took place in 2014 and 2015, one of my graduate nursing students decided to get involved.
Having already worked with me in the Greater Toledo area to screen children at risk for lead poisoning, my student helped conduct blood lead level screenings of the children exposed to the water. Test results later showed that the number of lead poisoned children in Flint had doubled after the crisis.
Since that time, some have worried that children in Flint are suffering academic setbacks as a result of being exposed to high levels of lead in Flint’s water supply.
State officials advised that as many as 9,000 children under the age of 6 in Flint be treated as having been exposed to high levels of lead after the city’s drinking water supply was switched in 2014 from water from Lake Huron to water from the Flint River.
Others, however, have pushed back, arguing that Flint’s water crisis is not the culprit behind any academic losses. Certainly lead was a problem for children in Flint long before the water problems.
But as a nursing professor and parent educator who specializes in treating children with elevated lead levels, I believe that just like in Detroit – where lead poisoned children have suffered academic setbacks after being exposed to lead, mostly from lead paint in their homes – similar academic setbacks are CONTINUE READING: How the Flint water crisis set students back – Raw Story
