FLINT MICHIGAN: The most Dangerous Drinking Water in the US. The Story of those who broke the story

http://www.alternet.org/environment/how-people-flint-michigan-ended-some-most-dangerous-tap-water-america?akid=13891.294211.G7MRSw&rd=1&src=newsletter1049099&t=20

My grandmother used to talk about people “closing the barn door after the horse got out.” That could be applied to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, now trying to slam it shut nearly two years after the people of Flint—and its children, in particular—have been poisoned by lead in their water. He has finally decided to call out the National Guard to distribute  water.

The governor isn’t alone as a villain in this saga. But today, I’d like to call attention to the heroines and heroes of this ongoing tragedy. Some are Flint residents and others are not, but they have all played key roles in bringing this emergency to national attention.

Michigan Public Radio’s Lindsey Smith wrote and produced “Not Safe to Drink,” the most comprehensive documentary on the crisis to date.

She raises this question:

What would you do if your tap water turned brown? If it gave your children a rash every time they took a bath? Or worse, what if it made them sick?

The program is available with transcripts (here are part 1, part 2, and part 3).

In the segment titled ” This mom helped uncover what was really going on with Flint’s water,“ we hear the story of stay-at-home mom LeeAnne Walters, whose husband Dennis is in the Navy, and their children Garrett, Gavin, JD, and Kaylie.

The Walters’ 4-year-old twins, Garrett and Gavin, were the first to show problems after swimming in the family pool.

“Gavin started breaking out every time he’d get in the pool,” says Walters. The rash was bad enough that Walters took him to the doctor. “And the doctors kept telling us it was contact dermatitis.” She says they told her that “he’s coming into contact with something that he’s allergic to.” Later, Walters says her doctors suggested it was eczema. They gave her a cortisone cream to rub on Gavin’s rash, but by July 2014, it wasn’t just Gavin. His twin brother Garrett got the rash too.“And we took them in and they told us it was scabies, so we treated them with a pesticide,” says Walters.

Tiny mites cause scabies, and the common treatment is a chemical that’s also in some pesticides. It’s even in some mosquito nets and flea collars.The rash on four-year-old Gavin Walters' foot.Walters rubbed the prescription cream on her twin boys from the neck down.“I spent a ton of money because all the laundry that we had, all the bedding that we had, we took it to a laundromat,” she says. Walters was relieved when the boys’ rash went away, but that feeling didn’t last long.Walters remembers the day the rash came back, because she had a bunch of people over to celebrate her daughter’s high school graduation."... all the people that were here swimming and drinking the water, all of them broke out."“And all the people that were here swimming and drinking the water, all of them broke out,” she says.