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Images of long lines of residents in Flint, Michigan, and Newark, New Jersey, queuing to find bottled water because their city water was contaminated with lead that damaged the brain was like what we expected to see only in a National Geographic photo broadcast from a in development".
And yet, in 2019, in Donald Trump's America, Flint and Newark are not outliers.
From one ocean to the other, from one border to the other, the threat of lead contamination is more pronounced in poor communities of color – with potentially devastating consequences for communities. infants and children.
the Disease Control Center warns that even a slight rise in the level of lead in the blood can reduce IQ, delay development and lead to behavioral problems.
In an academic white paper titled The "Racial ecology of lead poisoning" Harvard researchers Robert Sampson and Alix Winter studied "Toxicity Inequality in Chicago Neighborhoods from 1995 to 2013":
Yet, as revealed by the crisis in Flint, Michigan, there is a major health scourge that has not been subjected to the same neighborhood-level analytic scrutiny as other health indicators: lead poisoning. Contrary to longstanding health concerns, only relatively recent research has been conducted that concluded that lead is a major neurotoxin that alters cognitive, physical and behavioral functioning, even at relatively low levels. low.
Sampson and Winter criticized the National Research Council in the late 1990s, claiming that "science and society have remarkably taken a long time to recognize and take care of the full range of damage associated with the exhibition. lead".
Lead can be found in water, air and land. Lead exposure pathways include aged lead paint and the often abandoned housing stock that proliferated after the 2008 Wall Street mortgage robbery, particularly in poor, predominantly black communities such as Newark. and Flint.
Another source can be attributed to the vast expanses of abandoned American industrial wastelands abandoned by multinationals heading to their next "host" community.
As Reuters reported in May 2016, after the Flint water scandal broke, in the United States there was "Nearly 3,000 areas in which the recently recorded lead poisoning rate has at least doubled compared to Flint at the height of the city's contamination crisis. … and More than 1,100 of these communities had a high blood test rate at least four times higher. "
Reuters Lead Plague Map Expands "from Warren, Pennsylvania, a city in the Allegheny River where 36% of the children tested had elevated lead concentrations, up to a postcode located on Goat Island, Texas, where a quarter of the tests revealed poisoning. In some areas of Baltimore, Cleveland and Philadelphia, where lead poisoning has spread from generation to generation, the rate of elevated tests over the last decade was 40 to 50%. "
This report was based on the granular analysis of neighborhood neighbor lead testing data from state health departments and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As recently reported in the newspaper Health Affairs, "There is no safe level of lead in the blood. The effect of lead poisoning on the main systems of the body is permanent and no clinical or public health intervention can reverse it. "
The newspaper continues, "That's why The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has always recommended the adoption of health-oriented policies that require the identification of the dangers of lead before a child is exposed to it. "
This contaminated landscape is what you get when the capital is not held responsible and has room for maneuver to take flight for his next temporary home, leaving behind its toxic detritus.
For decades across the country, as our water systems continued to deteriorate and schools collapsed, government at all levels gave billions tax incentives and business subsidies.
Even as the National Resources Council and the New York Education Workers Caucus warned authorities of Newark's water and its dangerously high lead levels, Newark mayor Ras Baraka and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy both qualified as progressive democrats, offered Amazon 7 billion dollars in the incentives to settle in the brick city.
"New Jersey is open to business and, more than ever, Newark is the obvious choice as the next presence of Amazon's corporate offices," Murphy said. "Amazon now has the opportunity to join Newark's history of a booming city."
"Given the strengths of the city and the state – a strong talent pool, a diversified technology base, unparalleled infrastructure and a very accessible location – we are ready to welcome the giant of online sales", Baraka told Barron.
The $ 7 billion offered by a medium-sized state to a company would represent about 20% of the total. $ 35 billion it would take to replace all the lead water pipes in the entire nation.
As we debate the issue of reparations for African Americans, a consequence of the historic crime against humanity of slavery and Jim Crow, we continue to ignore the economic aspects of neglect that threaten the lives of millions of Americans. children of color.
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