{"id":18631,"date":"2021-01-29T11:15:15","date_gmt":"2021-01-29T11:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grist.org\/?p=497591"},"modified":"2021-01-29T11:15:15","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T11:15:15","slug":"new-charges-over-flints-water-crisis-offer-only-a-trickle-of-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/29\/new-charges-over-flints-water-crisis-offer-only-a-trickle-of-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"New charges over Flint\u2019s water crisis offer only a trickle of justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post has been updated.<\/em><\/p>\n

No punishment has yet fit the crime of the Flint water crisis<\/a>, complete with its child poisoning and lethal outbreak of Legionnaire\u2019s disease. After a prior investigation fell apart in 2019<\/a>, Michigan state prosecutors unveiled a slew of fresh charges<\/a> against nine figures involved in the fateful penny-pinching move to switch Flint\u2019s water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River in 2014. The river\u2019s waters, polluted from decades of industrial waste<\/a>, corroded Flint\u2019s old water pipes, releasing lead into drinking water and into the brains of thousands of children.<\/p>\n

Lead is a neurotoxin with irreversible effects and is not safe to ingest at any level. The New York Times<\/a> and Education Week<\/a> reported in 2019 that the percentage of Flint\u2019s school children who qualified for individualized special education services more than doubled from 13 percent before the crisis to 28 percent after. Add to those victims, the one dozen people who did not survive their bouts with Legionnaire\u2019s disease, a type of pneumonia that scientists linked to the water supply switch. The PBS program Frontline<\/em> determined in 2019 that a total of 115 Flint residents had died of pneumonia<\/a> during the outbreak, suggesting deaths attributed to Legionnaire\u2019s had been undercounted, potentially by up to a factor of nearly 10.<\/p>\n

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