Before Flint, Washington, DC had Lead Crisis “20 to 30 Times Larger” in Early 2000s

Before the lead crisis in Flint, Michigan, Washington, DC had a lead crisis that was “20 to 30 times larger” in 2004. WTOP News covered the lethal and life debilitating consequences of a change in water treatment chemicals. Unlike in Flint that involved a attempt at cost-saving, the federally-operated Washington’s Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) (now “DC Water”) sough to reduce disinfectant byproducts to align with the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘disinfectant byproduct rule”. The result was that a switch from chlorine to chloramine eroded “decades of protective mineral coating — or scaling — from the lead service lines”.

Local and federal health departments claimed that drinking water was not compromised. Eventually, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control arrived to investigate the crisis. According to Virginia Tech environmental engineer Marc Edwards, “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control came into town and wrote a falsified report that literally claimed that not a single man, woman or child in D.C. had any evidence any of them had their blood lead elevated above CDC’s level of concern.”

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Public Health Liberation seeks to elevate the political determinants of health. “There is no sense in our pretending that health inequity is perpetuated within a vacuum externalized from the political, legal, and regulatory environments that worsen health inequity,” said Founding Director Christopher Williams. Public Health Liberation is preparing a novel framework for ensure public health is at the forefront of levels of accountability.