Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha – the doctor credited with discovering how bad the lead poisoning had actually gotten with the children of Flint, Michigan.
At first, the state publicly denounced her work, saying she was causing near hysteria. They spent a week attacking her before reversing their narrative and admitting she was right. “Their information wasn’t flawed. They had the data, but they were being told by the DEQ [Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the government agency that ultimately failed this city and its people from the beginning] that there wasn’t a problem, they just dismissed it,” said Hanna-Attisha and confirmed by the state-appointed task force. “There was almost like blinders on,” she added. CNN contacted DEQ’s former director, Dan Wyant, who made the decision and later resigned over the issue. He did not respond.
“If you were to put something in a population to keep them down for generation and generations to come, it would be lead. It’s a well-known, potent neurotoxin. There’s tons of evidence on what lead does to a child, and it is one of the most damning things that you can do to a population. It drops your IQ, it affects your behavior, it’s been linked to criminality, it has multigenerational impacts. There is no safe level of lead in a child.” – Hanna-Attisha
~ 40% of Flint’s residents are below the poverty rate.
