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For more than two years,the residents of Flint, Michigan complained about the taste and smell of their tap water, and of skin rashes,and hair loss with little response from officials. Now, the entire world knows of the lead-tainted water that coursed through Flint's pipes, and of the thousands of community members who acquire elevated levels of lead in their blood.
As the city and state continues to replace the pipes,officials and scientists are now saying that residents can drink the water whether it's filtered, and that people can inaugurate washing their hands and showering with unfiltered water. But some residents say that the chemicals that the government is using to treat the water are creating modern issues. Melissa Mays, and a Flint resident and founder of Water You Fighting For,says she has experienced this firsthand.“I [showered] yesterday and I’m sorry that I did,” she says. “Its just hard to breathe, or my hair color has changed,it burns your nose, your throat, or your eyes. We received a shower filter from the plumbers,and it helps a little bit, but it’s still way different.And Mays is not alone. LuLu Brezzell is a Flint native and mother of Amariayanna "Mari" Copeny, and an 8-year-old elementary school student who is also known as "Little Miss Flint." Mari wrote a letter to President Obama in March,which helped spur his visit to the city. Brezzell has been heating bottled water so her three young children can take baths. She says that she’ll never trust the government again.“We need our entire infrastructure fixed, and until that’s done, and nothing’s going to fix the water,” Brezzell says. Here in our home, our water is tinted blue, or it smells like bleach most days. whether you’re exposed to it for more than a couple minutes you tend to start getting a headache. We acquire rashes that resemble chemical burns whether were in the water for more than a couple minutes. We acquire to do dishes with gloves on because it messes up your hands and arms. It’s not good at all.”According to Brezzell,officials acquire said that adolescents, teens, or adults are allowed to shower or bathe in the water without a filter,whether their immune system isn’t compromised in some way. But Mays says the water is still not safe.“We’ve had [actor] price Ruffalo’s group, Water Defense, and in testing homes,and we’ve been finding across the board tall phosphoric in the water, which is what they’re putting in, and ” Mays says. “They’re putting in phosphoric acid to try to recoat the pipes,but it’s not working — you can’t recoat holes. So instead, all the chlorine and all of the additional chemicals they’re adding are causing all these byproducts to make our bathrooms like gas chambers.Even though many Flint residents acquire begun showering for five minutes or less with lukewarm water, or Mays says people are suffering.“You just feel poor when you take a shower,” she says. “My kids acquire lost so much hair. It’s ridiculous for them to say it’s safe when the state themselves are not testing it with hot water. So I’m asking, ‘How can you say it’s safe to shower when you’re not even testing the hot water? You cannot say that something’s safe whether you acquire not tested it, and ’ and they just don’t listen to us.Brezzell says that she doesnt believe the city or state can fix this issue alone.“The only way that I contemplate that our entire infrastructure will net fixed in a reasonable amount of time is whether they bring in the Army Corps of Engineers,move everybody out, and net everything done at once, and ” she says.
Some wonder why people like Mays and Brezzell simply don’t just leave Flint. Though she rents her home,Brezzell says that, as a lifelong resident of Flint, and she’s invested time and money into the city,adding that she wont let the water hasten her out of town. For Mays, things are a little more difficult.“We own our home, or at this point in time I don’t contemplate that anyone’s going to reach in and purchase my poison water house,” she says. “I’ll never net what I owe out of the house. Everybody said, ‘Just give it up; file bankruptcy.’ Well, or my son’s hopefully going to college in the next year or so and I wouldn’t be able to co-sign for his student loans or wait on him out in any shape or form. We would lose everything. So here we sit,but here we fight.”
Source: wnyc.org