Why Did The Water In Flint Get So Polluted ? Is it a risk for the U.K.

What happened in the US town of Flint, Michigan was an example of how companies and governments put profit first and and people second.

Over many years industry, in particular the motor industry, recklessly used rivers specifically the Flint river, to dispose of their waste, introducing dangerous chemicals and toxic substances to the local water system.

Over time many of these substances accumulated in rivers and on river beds and by as early the 1930s all the fish had disappeared from the Flint water..

Although  it wasn't only the big motor industry that had sole responsibility, once the big car players left, decisions made by the authorities at the time led to the catastrophic events experienced by the Flint people, large scale sewage spills into the river became a regular thing and these weren't properly policed or prevented. This could be partly attributed to neglect and partly due to the loss of tax revenue in the area, as economically the heart had been ripped out of the community almost immediately when General Motors left.

Furthermore, due to the shortage of tax dollars and a sharply declining local economy the powers that be decided to source the water once again from the local Flint river , reversing the prior decision made to divert water from a further and cleaner source. That decision itself proved tragic for many people.

The water was so polluted and high in bacteria, industrial waste, metals and sewage that it was essentially undrinkable, but the worst was yet to come, the high levels of sediment and acidity had began to erode the water pipes themselves, this erosion led to the lead from the pipes being mobilised. Now this type of problem might have been dealt with as routine maintenance in normal times, but this was no normal time or no normal city.. Flint was on the verge of economic collapse and for reasons better known to those in power at the time, profit was put before people.

The results of all of this have been catastrophic, widespread reports of skin sores and hair falling out, immune and digestive systems breaking down, for all it seemed there was some sort of inevitable sickness, but perhaps the saddest of all were the reports in relation to children, many of whom had developed lead poisoning either as infants or even while in their mothers womb.

Lead attaches to the a child's brain and can leave the child involved unable to concentrate or retain information for the rest of their entire life, literally the metal sticks to their brain and other organs.

Lead is an irreversible neurotoxin  - there is NO safe level of lead.

Could this happen in the UK?

It is unthinkable, but by no means impossible,

UK rivers carry all the same contaminants as those in the Michigan area, Industrial waste, pesticides and fertilisers from agricultural waste, bacteria, sewage spills.

Furthemore, the pipework in the UK is very old and vast , hundreds of thousands of miles of pipes make up the entire UK water framework.

Now alarmingly,  a recent 2020 study of all of the Rivers and streams in England found that 100% of all English rivers and streams were polluted beyond safe levels, according to the Environment Agency.

The most problematic contaminants are sewage, farming chemicals and industrial waste.

In 2016 when the last study was completed 165 of rivers were deemed safe, so t seems to be going the wrong direction.

What dos that mean for our homes?

We looked into various UK postcodes at random, from all the main UK water boards and found that in every case there is lead in the drinking water, if you drink unfiltered water from the tap in the UK you will consume some level of lead - every time.

How can we stop this?

The only way to really take control of the water you put in your glass is to deal with it at the point of consumption.

Lead may be the headline grabbing contaminant but there are so many potential threats, from industrial waste and flushed pharmaceuticals, to chlorine and fluoride introduced by our governments, all of which we have the power to stop.

in recent times there have been many scientific breakthroughs with water filtering in particular with activated carbon, we now know that this material when used correctly can block out all the impurities present in tap water

in fact because of the way in which it filters, it literally draws the impurities to the carbon giving it the equivalent surface area 3000 x it's actual visible area.

Activated Carbon can and will remove the following

Lead,

Copper

Fertilisers

Pesticides

Microplastics

Chlorine

Flouride

Bacteria

Turbity

THM’s

and many more of the threats that our water poses.

Neil (Founder)

Font Filters Ltd

www.fontfilters.com

@fontfilters