Following the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, in which the city’s health was put at risk due to high lead content in the drinking water, 25 national public health, water utility, environmental, labor, consumer, housing, and state and local governmental organizations came together to help accelerate lead service line (LSL) replacement across the country.
The Lead Service Line Replacement Collaborative and its work among public health agencies and water utilities to create innovative solutions to tackle lead exposure were the focus of a recent panel event at Milken Institute School of Public Health: “Drinking Water and Lead Service Lines: Partnering to Protect Public Health.”
“There’s no doubt lead contamination continues to be an ongoing problem,” said Dean Lynn R. Goldman during the opening remarks. Having been involved in this issue her entire career, Dean Goldman said that while she has “seen remarkable transformation,” there is still a lot that needs to be done.
Lead can be found in dust, air, soil and water—LSLs are the largest source of lead in drinking water—and lead exposure can have serious, lifelong effects on health, including cognitive and developmental impairments and behavioral problems. Babies and children are most vulnerable to lead poisoning.
Yaquelin Vargas, a resident of Flint, Michigan, and a panelist, shared her heart-wrenching story about dealing with lead contamination in her home and how it’s affected her family. She talked about the struggles of everyday life living off bottled water for everything. “As a parent I don’t want to live like this anymore” she said.
Jean Schultz, environmental and disease control specialist at the City of Milwaukee Department of Public Health, talked about the agency’s collaboration with Milwaukee Water Works to prevent people like Vargas from having to rely on cases of water for every aspect of daily life and living in fear of disease.
“Water utilities have a big stake in this” said Cynthia McCarthy, HUD program manager for Cincinnati Health Department. They often the ones who find the contamination and then have to reach out to departments of health and other relevant organizations to report it. McCarthy and
Cathy Bailey, executive director of Greater Cincinnati Water Works, talked about efforts in Cincinnati to reduce LSLs. Bailey also illustrated the socioeconomic connection to lead exposure, which often affects low-income communities and communities of color in greater numbers.
Panelists noted that this an ongoing challenge and must be solved by multilateral collaboration between state and federal agencies and local communities. For information on how prevent lead exposure and identify sources of lead, check out the Center for Disease Control’s web page.