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New reports reveal many communities across the US have contaminated drinking water.
New reports reveal many communities across the US have contaminated drinking water.
The affected communities uncovered by Reuters extend from Warren, Pennsylvania, where 36 percent of children tested had elevated lead levels, to an area of Goat Island, Texas, where 25 percent of tests revealed poisoning. In some neighborhoods in distressed cities like Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, the rate of high tests over the past decade ranged from 40-50 percent.
As in Flint, legacy lead in the form of paint, plumbing or industrial waste has been the root cause of the poisoning. And because many of the most impacted zones lie in poor rural communities, forgotten post-industrial cities or largely minority neighborhoods, the problem has been left to fester for decades by the very authorities that have been charged with protecting public health. Perhaps the worst tragedy in this crisis, which appears to be emerging at a national level, is that disadvantaged children are those who are most likely to have been poisoned.
Reuters' is not the only investigation of the national water crisis to come out, but the question we have to ask ourselves remains: How did this happen in the first place?
Comment: Read more about the 'poisoning of the well' in the U.S.
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