Kathleen E. Bachynski is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. She grew up in Bloomfield Hills and graduated with bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Michigan.
By Kathleen E. Bachynski
Safe drinking water is essential to public health and to living in a modern society. Over the past century, the remarkable decline in deaths from infectious diseases in the United States and across the world can be largely attributed to the provision of clean water. In 1998, Quentin Young, former president of the American Public Health Association, observed, "Turning on any kitchen faucet for a glass of drinking water without hesitation or peril is a silent homage to public health success, which would not have been possible at the start of the twentieth century."
Ensuring a safe water supply should be considered one of the fundamental public health responsibilities of government to its citizens. Yet in the past year, the ability of citizens of two of Michigan's largest cities to access safe water has been seriously threatened. Last year in Detroit, the city began shutting off water to homes where residents could not pay their water bills. This made national headlines, with United Nations experts warning that the water shutoffs were a threat to human rights.
This fall, Michiganders learned that after Flint switched to a new source, the water supply became severely contaminated with lead. In some cases, lead levels were so high as to be classified as hazardous waste. For months, children were poisoned as city and state officials downplayed the complaints of residents and denied reports documenting the water's dangers.
Officials have finally acknowledged the crisis and declared a public health emergency in Flint, but their decisions have caused irrevocable harm. The effects of lead poisoning, from kidney and brain damage to hearing loss, are irreversible.
As a result, well into the 21st century, Americans can no longer assume that they can obtain a clean glass of water from the faucets in their homes. The fundamental failure of state and local government to fulfill this obligation to their citizens is profound.
Furthermore, many of the children most affected by lead poisoning in Flint and elsewhere in the United States are from poor families. They are also far more likely to be black. What does it mean that we as a society are willing to poison these vulnerable children, or to shut off the water to residents in Detroit, one of our poorest cities? Are their lives and health expendable? If we believe that all Americans have the right to grow up safe and free from toxic poisoning, we must confront these urgent questions.
And the egregious failures in Flint and Detroit may only be the tip of the iceberg. Across the United States, safe drinking water is threatened by decaying infrastructure. The American Society of Civil Engineers has warned that we are at risk of "reversing the environmental, public health and economic gains of the last three decades" if we do not address the flaws in our water systems.
It is unconscionable that citizens of the richest country in the world should be poisoned by their own drinking water. It is outrageous that residents of the Great Lakes state, surrounded by the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth, do not have access to safe water. All Americans should be able to turn to our kitchen faucets for water without hesitation or peril, and the public's health depends on it.