Book Review: "What the Eyes Don’t See" – Lead, Water and Michigan Politics

Flint. In that singular word is summed up a water crisis. Even if you don’t know much about what happened, the word Flint is now associated with water, and not in a good way.

Flint, Michigan is where this book takes place. The city of Flint always relied on public drinking water from Lake Huron. But that water was more expensive and Flint’s economic woes caused a chain reaction that caused the city to switch to another public water source; a chain reaction that many public officials still have not been held accountable for. April 25 2014 was the date the water supply changed from Lake Huron to the Flint River, a switch precipitated by the basest of all things…money. It was cheaper to use degraded water. But the public noticed immediately. The water looked bad and tasted worse. More chlorine was added; boil alerts were sent out. It was suggested by the city that residents should “flush” their water for at least five minutes before using it. As author Mona Hanna-Attisha points out, it was discovered there were lead contamination issues with Flint city water. But the book also addresses the larger issue of lead that it is a subject rooted in the historical context of the seen physical environment. The author states: “When the League of Nations banned lead paint in 1922 the U.S. declined to go along,” she writes. “At that point the regulation of lead paint in this country was almost nonexistent. Lead was big business in America.” And everyone thought of lead as a physical property that was tangible - paint. In fact lead was finally restricted, but not totally outlawed, in plumbing – those pipes in our home bringing us clean water - only in 1986.

She continues on: “Despite the well documented history and science of lead in water, the issue remained under ground and out of sight. And yet unlike any other form of lead exposure, lead in water impacts a much younger and much more developmentally vulnerable age group. Even more insidious than lead in paint, lead in water, colorless odorless and invisible, is meant for ingesting.” She chronicles how she began testing for lead in her patients, how a small force who knew there was lead in the water combated a larger bungling city and state government to prove there was lead contamination and how they fought, along with the help of local media, to expose failings from the City of Flint, the county, the state and the EPA. As she puts it bluntly on page 13, “This is the story of the most important and emblematic environmental and public health disaster of this young century. It is the story of a government poisoning its own citizens and then lying about it. It is a story about what happens when the very people responsible for keeping us safe care more about money and power than they care about us.”

Author Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha

Once the lead issue was exposed to the media and to the whole of the American public, the bottled water community stepped in providing innumerable cases of clean, fresh water for residents. Beginning in 2016 the state had been providing free bottled water for residents, but that came to an abrupt halt in April 2018. As the New York Times reported, the City of Flint is currently working with contractors to replace all of the affected lead compromised plumbing lines by 2020. “Just over 6,200 have been replaced so far,” said Steve Branch, the acting city administrator. “An estimated 12,000 could remain.” This mean that there is still compromised plumbing. But perhaps one of the most disturbing things about the water crisis is found on page 284. “We found out later that in January 2015 state officials, while telling Flint residents that their water was safe to drink, were arranging for water coolers to be delivered to the Flint State office building so state employees wouldn't have to drink from the tap.” This revelation shows the staggering callousness of local officials. Fortunately, due to her commitment, the author was able to unravel the lead contamination and bring the issue to light.

While the book is an interesting read in terms of how the water crisis unfolded, it also is a message of troubling proportion in terms of local, county, state and federal officials and their willful deception in ignoring the lead crisis. What the Eyes Don’t See serves as a reminder that we must continually fight for clean water, an issue that desperately needs to be addressed not only in Flint Michigan, but also across the US and across the globe where water is being compromised on a daily basis, sometimes out of ignorance, but almost always because of money. And do not be fooled. This could happen where you live too.

What The EyesDon’t See

By Mona Hanna-Attisha

One World Publishing

364 pages/$24.95 Hardback