Thousands of U.S. locales where lead poisoning is worse than in Flint

This is a public health disaster. It&#x27;s tough to really fathom the number of children across the country that will suffer mental and behavioral problems for life because of this.<p>Why are there not more lawsuits? Is the scope of the damage too difficult to quantify, or the negligent parties too diffuse&#x2F;remote to sue?<p>As much as our litigation-based culture is vilified, it can help spur action by changing the cost&#x2F;benefit of doing nothing and force companies&#x2F;governments to step up and fix this before more people are hurt. The risk of Mesothelioma lawsuits, for example, help add some seriousness to asbestos exposure claims.

Aside from the disturbing levels of lead poisoning in some locations, this also reveals how little is publicly knowable about lead levels in some areas. It really paints a picture of widespread problems and obstructions to shining a light on them.

I went to my water utility&#x27;s website to find out their numbers. First I was shocked that they publish their numbers only once a year! And even in that report they say last lead measurement was in 2013 because Department of Health only requites measurement every 3 years! With Trump about to set loose entire Oil, gas and fracking industry like never before this might get lot worse.

<i>Instead, Reuters sought testing data at the neighborhood level, in census tracts or zip code areas, submitting records requests to all 50 states.</i><p>Too bed there&#x27;s no way to study the dataset directly short of repeating the process.

I put together a search engine[1] for this very thing a few months ago. The data is publicly available, but obscure and usually buried in poorly described .gov city pages.<p>[1]<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;2h5yGNg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;bit.ly&#x2F;2h5yGNg</a>

I remember reading years ago about how water utilities were replacing chlorine with chloramine because it was cheaper. From what I understand, chloramine is more corrosive and it erodes the lining in the lead pipes. Does anyone know if it&#x27;s standard practice for water companies to do their quality sampling at the taps?

Will they get the same attention?<p>Will the nation ever upgrade and repair ancient and disastrous infrastructure?

It looks like California is relatively clean on this scale, but what about the Superfund sites? I feel like those are gray areas that get much less attention than I would expect. With former semiconductor fab sites and former military sites getting increasingly developed with sometimes only a few feet of topsoil removed for cleanup (plus some kind of shielding material?), and a seeming lack of hard data for long term health impact, count me among the concerned.<p>(happy to have my worries put to rest by HN&#x27;ers!)

When it comes to testing your water, some counties offer home testing services to concerned residents for free. I urge everybody with kids or thinking of having them to check your local county government&#x27;s website for information. Even if the water treatment facility in your area is free of lead, the pipes in your home or neighborhood might not be.

It is hard to sue government. It is even harder to make them lose their jobs. When it comes to compensation they will simply use our own money to pay back.<p>Utilities remains a major pain in USA partly because of the ridiculous government control which invariably leads to corruption.<p>I have been exclusively using distilled water in Sunnyvale for last 3 years. Water in Sunnyvale has dangerous levels of pesticides if not lead.

So Reuters is finally getting around to doing their job; moving beyond a sensationalized story which sells ads, to the unglamorous work of uncovering the truth, that Flint isn&#x27;t special at all and that the government knew that and has been covering it up.<p>It&#x27;s a shame they couldn&#x27;t get around to reporting the truth behind the sensation a year ago when public outcry was enough to get substantial Federal funding allocated to fixing this nation-wide.<p>First there should be a Federal law requiring disclosure of testing data nationwide, and the full sets should be put online in standardized formats.<p>Childhood lead rates should be shown next to walkability score and crime stats on Realtor sites. Home sellers should be mandated to report their local area exposure rates at the time of sale.<p>Second, setup a super-fund type cash pool which provides for remediation of the top X% of effected areas.<p>Third, new laws for mandatory testing and reporting, and fines and felonies for underreporting, misreporting, or falsifying reports of childhood lead exposure.<p>Here&#x27;s to hoping that major infrastructure spending includes the unglamorous water mains replacements as much as the more glamorous monument-style projects.