What the Eyes Don't See_A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
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BELOW YOU’LL FIND A SELECTION OF sources that informed this book. Please see “Further Reading” and MonaHannaAttisha.com for more resources.
CHAPTER 1: WHAT THE EYES DON’T SEE
“It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men”: This quote is frequently attributed to Douglass in sources that include the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s newsletter, Young Children (volume 53), and The New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/opinion/blow-fathers-sons-and-brothers-keepers.html), but is not reliably sourced to Douglass’s writings.
The eyes don’t see what the mind doesn’t know: The actual quote is “What the eye doesn’t see and the mind doesn’t know, doesn’t exist.” D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (first published in 1928, then suppressed until an epic thirty-year obscenity ban was overturned) (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), p. 16.
“When we’re sick, we hear”: Bertolt Brecht, “A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor” (1938), trans. Thomas Mark Kuhn and David J. Constantine, in Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (New York: Norton, 2018).
chronically activates stress hormones: Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, Toxic Stress, 2017, developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/toxic-stress.
In a landmark study: Vincent J. Felitti et al., “Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 14, no. 4 (1998): 245–58.
six or more ACEs: David W. Brown et al., “Adverse Childhood Experiences and the Risk of Premature Mortality,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 37, no. 5 (2009): 389–96.
just one ACE puts a child: Robyn Wing et al., “Association Between Adverse Childhood Experiences in the Home and Pediatric Asthma,” Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology 114, no. 5 (2015): 379–84.
the Tuskegee syphilis experiment: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee: The Tuskegee Timeline,” updated August 30, 2017, www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm.
CHAPTER 3: THE VALEDICTORIAN
But once it was in her bloodstream: The scientific references regarding lead pathophysiology and impact are many; only a few are highlighted here. In 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a report on the nature and impacts of human lead exposure: U.S. EPA, Air Quality Criteria for Lead (Final Report, 2006), EPA/600/R-05/144aF-bF (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Protection Agency, 2006). For comprehensive reviews of studies on the neurotoxic effects of lead on both children and adults, see Theodore I. Lidsky and Jay S. Schneider, “Lead Neurotoxicity in Children: Basic Mechanisms and Clinical Correlates,” Brain 126, no. 1 (2003): 5–19, doi.org/10.1093/brain/awg014; and Talia Sanders et al., “Neurotoxic Effects and Biomarkers of Lead Exposure: A Review,” Reviews on Environmental Health 24, no. 1 (2009): 15–45. For an in-depth analysis of the effects found in adults and children with low-level lead exposure, see National Toxicology Program, NTP Monograph on Health Effects of Low-Level Lead (Washington, D.C.: Department of Health and Human Services, 2012), ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/ohat/lead/final/monographhealtheffectslowlevellead_newissn_508.pdf. Even trace amounts of lead can impact children and adults; see National Institute of Environmental Health Services, “Environmental Agents: Lead,” reviewed June 15, 2017, www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/lead/index.cfm.
CHAPTER 5: RED FLAGS
In July 2015 he posted a news story: Curt Guyette, “Scary: Leaded Water and One Flint Family’s Toxic Nightmare,” Deadline Detroit, July 9, 2015, www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/12697/scary_leaded_water_and_one_flint_family_s_toxic_nightmare.
an eight-page interim report: Miguel A. Del Toral, “High Lead Levels in Flint, Michigan—Interim Report” [memorandum], June 24, 2015, flintwaterstudy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Miguels-Memo.pdf.
“a rogue employee”: Sarah Hulett, “High Lead Levels in Michigan Kids after City Switches Water Source,” NPR, September 29, 2015, www.npr.org/2015/09/29/444497051/high-lead-levels-in-michigan-kids-after-city-switches-water-source.
The D.C. water story broke: Josh Levin, “Plumbing the Depths: The EPA Finds Too Much Lead in D.C. Tap Water,” Washington City Paper, October 18, 2002, www.washingtoncitypaper.com/news/article/13025198/plumbing-the-depths.
“would literally have to be classified”: Pierre Home-Douglas, “The Water Guy,” Prism: American Society for Engineering Education 14, no. 3 (2004), www.prism-magazine.org/nov04/feature_water.cfm.
In January 2004 The Washington Post published: David Nakamura, “Water in D.C. Exceeds EPA Lead Limit,” Washington Post, January 31, 2004, www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/01/31/water-in-dc-exceeds-epa-lead-limit/1e54ff9b-a393-4f0a-a2dd-7e8ceedd1e91/.
That wouldn’t change until: Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act, Pub. L. No. 111-380, 124 STAT. 4131 (2011).
cooked up its own corrupt study: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “Blood Lead Levels in Residents of Homes with Elevated Lead in Tap Water—District of Columbia, 2004,” MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 53, no. 12 (2004): 268–70.
in a partial replacement: Miguel A. Del Toral, Andrea Porter, and Michael R. Schock, “Detection and Evaluation of Elevated Lead Release from Service Lines: A Field Study,” Environmental Science and Technology 47, no. 16 (2013): 9300–9307.
The following year he published a report: Marc Edwards, Simoni Triantafyllidou, and Dana Best, “Elevated Blood Lead in Young Children Due to Lead-Contaminated Drinking Water: Washington, DC, 2001–2004,” Environmental Science & Technology 43, no. 5 (2009): 1618–23, doi.org/10.1021/es802789w. For details of the efforts required to convince authorities that children’s blood lead levels had increased at least in part due to the elevated concentrations of lead in their drinking water, see Robert McCartney, “Virginia Tech Professor Uncovered Truth About Lead in D.C. Water,” Washington Post, May 23, 2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/22/AR2010052203447.html.
“scientifically indefensible”: Carol D. Leonnig, “CDC Misled District Residents About Lead Levels in Water, House Probe Finds,” Washington Post, May 20, 2010, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/19/AR2010051902599.html; Darryl Fears, “GAO to Rebuke CDC for Playing Down Health Risk from Lead in D.C. Tap Water,” Washington Post, April 3, 2011, www.washingtonpost.com/national/gao-to-rebuke-cdc-for-playing-down-health-risk-from-lead-in-dc-tap-water/2011/04/01/AFvWkaXC_story.html.
CHAPTER 6: FIRST ENCOUNTER
his angry, hate-spewing, anti-Semitic radio program: “The Radio Priest,” American Experience documentary, 1988; Sheldon Marcus, Father Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life of the Priest of the Little Flower (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972).
in 1934 Coughlin received: Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin & the Great Depression (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), p. 119.
CHAPTER 7: MIASMA
My favorite sleuth is John Snow: There are many excellent John Snow references, including these: Peter Vinten-Johansen et al., Cholera, Chloroform, and the Science of Medicine: A Life of John Snow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), and its online companion, johnsnow.matrix.msu.edu/index.php; Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (New York: Riverhead Books, 2006); Marjorie Bloy, “Cholera Comes to Britain: October 1831,” A Web of English History, modified March 4, 2016, www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/p-health/cholera3.htm; and Ralph R. Frerichs, “John Snow: Removal of the Pump Handle,” UCLA Department of Epidemiology, www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/removal.html.
a bacteriologist named Paul Shekwana: Sour
ces about Paul Shekwana include these, some of which have been digitized by the Library of Congress: Dr. Shekwana appointment: Iowa City Daily Press, September 3, 1904, p. 1; offices in the third-floor medical building: Iowa City Daily Press, October 25, 1904, p. 8; work preventing typhoid: Iowa City Daily Press, May 16, 1905, p. 1; work with Iowa water supply: Iowa City Daily Press, June 26, 1906, p. 5; Dr. Shekwana’s return to England: Fredericksburg News, Fredericksburg, Iowa, July 19, 1906, p. 3; his death: “Famous Scientist Is Killed at Iowa City,” Sioux Valley News, Correctionville, Woodbury County, Iowa, July 12, 1906, p. 1; Dr. Shekwana’s death in national news: “Crowded Over a Cliff,” Daily Nevada State Journal, Reno, July 8, 1906, p. 1, and “Scientist Accidently Killed,” San Francisco Call, July 8, 1906, p. 29; JAMA article: Paul Shekwana, “Disinfection of Physician’s Hands,” Journal of the American Medical Association 47, no. 2120 (1906).
“In the little world in which children have their existence”: Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (New York: Penguin Classics, 1996), p. 63.
“Flint drinking water meets”: Kristen Jordan Shamus, “State DEQ Didn’t Take Flint Water Concerns Seriously,” Detroit Free Press, February 14, 2016, www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2016/02/13/state-deq-flint-water-concerns/80332954/.
“You don’t want the higher chloride”: Ron Fonger, “General Motors Shutting Off Flint River Water at Engine Plant Over Corrosion Worries,” MLive, October 13, 2014 (updated January 17, 2015), www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2014/10/general_motors_wont_use_flint.html.
“Let me start here”: Lindsey Smith, “Leaked Internal Memo Shows Federal Regulator’s Concerns About Lead in Flint’s Water,” Michigan Radio, July 13, 2015, michiganradio.org/post/leaked-internal-memo-shows-federal-regulator-s-concerns-about-lead-flint-s-water.
CHAPTER 8: NO RESPONSE
a Nestorian stele: Weam Namou, “The China Connection: Nestorian Stele Tells Ancient Tale,” Chaldean News, December 26, 2015, culturalglimpse.com/2016/01/09/the-china-connection-nestorian-stele-tells-ancient-tale/.
CHAPTER 9: SIT DOWN
Long before cars were made: My sources on Flint history include: Lawrence R. Gustin, Billy Durant: Creator of General Motors (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1973); David L. Lewis, The Public Image of Henry Ford: An American Folk Hero and His Company (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1976); Andrew R. Highsmith, Demolition Means Progress: Flint, Michigan, and the Fate of the American Metropolis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); R. C. Sadler and D. J. Lafreniere, “Racist Housing Practices as a Precursor to Uneven Neighborhood Change in a Post-Industrial City,” Housing Studies 32, no. 2 (2017): 186–208; Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996); Kim Crawford, The Daring Trader: Jacob Smith in the Michigan Territory, 1802–1825 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2012); Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936–37 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969); Nelson Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University Archives (labor union oral history and image galleries); Flint Sit-Down website and links: reuther.wayne.edu/node/7092.
Genora Johnson Dollinger, a serious socialist: Susan Rosenthal, “Genora (Johnson) Dollinger Remembers the 1936–37 General Motors Sit-Down Strike,” www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/dollflint.html; Studs Terkel, “Genora Johnson Dollinger,” in The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century (New York: New Press, 1997), pp. 511–20; The Great Sit-Down: Yesterday’s Witness in America, BBC (1976), documentary; With Babies and Banners: The Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade, dir. Lorraine Gray (1979), Academy Award–nominated documentary.
“The law knows no finer hour”: Falbo v. United States, 320 U.S. 549, 561 (1944), Justice Murphy dissenting opinion; quoted in J. Woodford Howard, Jr., Mr. Justice Murphy: A Political Biography (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 33.
“legalization of racism”: Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 242 (1944), Justice Murphy dissenting opinion; quoted in Robert Havey, “The Dissenter,” bentley.umich.edu/news-events/magazine/the-dissenter/.
Dr. Ossian Sweet: Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (New York: Henry Holt, 2004).
an important test of justice: Joseph Turrini, “Sweet Justice,” Michigan History Magazine, July–August 1999, pp. 22–27, www.michigan.gov/documents/dnr/mhc_mag_sweet-justice_308404_7.pdf.
outlawed racial housing covenants: Shelly v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948).
1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision: Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
riots in Detroit and Flint: “See How Riots in Detroit 50 Years Ago Spread to Flint,” MLive, July 24, 2017, www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2017/07/see_how_riots_in_detroit_50_ye.html.
a groundbreaking fair housing ordinance: Joe Lawlor, “Flint Made Civil Rights History 40 Years Ago,” Flint Journal, February 10, 2008, blog.mlive.com/flintjournal/newsnow/2008/02/flint_made_civil_rights_histor.html.
“Court’s refusal to remedy”: Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974), Justice Marshall dissenting opinion.
almost 60 percent of children live in poverty: The 2017 Flint child poverty rate was 58.3 percent. Michigan League for Public Policy, “Flint: 2017 Trends in Child Well-Being,” 2017 Kids Count in Michigan Data Book, www.mlpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Flint-db-2017-Rev.pdf.
48 killings in Flint: Jake May, “Six Startling Statistics about Guns and Homicides in Flint,” MLive, March 10, 2016, www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2016/03/six_startling_statistics_of_gu.html.
state of Michigan cut revenue sharing: Dominic Adams, “Report Says Flint Lost Out on Nearly $55 Million in Revenue Sharing in Last Decade,” MLive, March 19, 2014, www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2014/03/report_says_flint_lost_out_on.html; Mitch Bean, “Mitch Bean: Starving Michigan Cities and the Coming Storm,” MLive, June 1, 2016, www.mlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/06/mitch_bean_starving_michigan_c.html.
Public Act 4: Josh Hakala, “How Did We Get Here? A Look Back at Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law,” Michigan Radio, February 3, 2016, michiganradio.org/post/how-did-we-get-here-look-back-michigans-emergency-manager-law.
Between 2008 and 2016, it shrank: Alex Kellogg, “What Flint’s Water Crisis and Its Gun Violence Epidemic Have in Common,” Trace, March 16, 2016, www.thetrace.org/2016/03/what-flints-water-crisis-and-its-gun-violence-epidemic-have-in-common/.
CHAPTER 10: JENNY + THE DATA
“Marc Edwards, a civil engineer”: MacArthur Foundation, “Marc Edwards: Water Quality Engineer | Class of 2007,” updated August 2015, www.macfound.org/fellows/823/.
All research done on humans is protected: The Tuskegee Study resulted in the passage of the National Research Act of 1974 and the establishment of a Health and Human Services Policy for Protection of Human Research Subjects. As a result, all U.S. research involving human subjects must now be reviewed and approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB). Wayne W. LaMorte, “Institutional Review Boards and the Belmont Principles: The Syphilis Study at Tuskegee,” modified June 8, 2016, sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/ep/ep713_researchethics/ep713_researchethics3.html; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee: Research Implications,” updated February 22, 2017, www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/after.htm.
“They pull that rabbit out”: Ron Fonger, “Feds Sending in Experts to Help Flint Keep Lead Out of Water,” MLive, September 10, 2015, www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2015/09/university_researchers_dont_dr.html.
CHAPTER 11: PUBLIC HEALTH ENEMY #1
L
ead is probably the most widely studied neurotoxin: There are many terrific books and magazine articles on the history of industrial lead use. I learned most from: Lydia Denworth, Toxic Truth: A Scientist, a Doctor, and the Battle over Lead (Boston: Beacon Press, 2009); Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013); Christian Warren, Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Jamie Lincoln Kitman, “The Secret History of Lead,” Nation, March 2, 2000, www.thenation.com/article/secret-history-lead/; William Kovarik, “Ethyl-Leaded Gasoline: How a Classic Occupational Disease Became an International Public Health Disaster,” International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 11, no. 4 (2005): 384–97.
lead in the Romans’ food: The debate about the role of lead in the fall of Rome has been raging for decades. It started with Jerome O. Nriagu, “Saturnine Gout Among Roman Aristocrats: Did Lead Poisoning Contribute to the Fall of the Empire?,” New England Journal of Medicine 308, no. 11 (1983): 660–63.
“gift from God”: “A ‘Gift from God’? The Public Health Controversy over Leaded Gasoline During the 1920s,” American Journal of Public Health 75, no. 4 (1985): 344–52; and Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (Berkeley, Calif.: Milbank Memorial Fund, 2002), pp. 12–35.