Flint Lead Crisis Getting a Tad Overdone.
Flint's 8,000 children have not had their lives destroyed...Taken as a whole, in fact, Flint's kids are better off than the previous generations of Michigander kids in at least one important way. Even after Flint’s disaster, the city’s children have far less lead in their blood than their parents or grandparents did at the same age.
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If you don’t know anything about lead, that might sound like some great tragedy. But as this CDC chart shows, it is no big deal.
Almost 90 percent of 70s-era children had blood lead levels in excess of 10 micrograms per deciliter… And the blood lead levels were likely even higher for children from earlier 20th century decades — all without harm.Lead hysteria was fueled by the junk science of the University of Pittsburgh’s Herbert Needleman.* Though debunked (federal investigators concluded Needleman’s work was “difficult to explain as honest error”), it is the basis for today’s lead hysteria.
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