The director, Anthony Baxter, was holed up for long periods at the Holiday Inn Express in Flint, Michigan, capturing 400 hours of footage about one of the worst human-caused environmental disasters in American history. This monumental testimonial has been pared down to a devastating two-hour feature that has its US premiere at the Environmental Film Festival in Washington earlier this month.
Flint, a former car manufacturing boom town that fell into economic decline, tried to save money in 2014 by taking its water supply from the Flint River but did not treat it to reduce a corrosive effect on old pipes. As a consequence, lead leached into the system, causing a public health catastrophe. Blood tests found children had high levels of lead; reading scores in Flint have subsequently fallen by 50%, according to the state education department.
Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician, tells the film: “Lead passes your blood-brain barrier. It’s a neurotoxin; it causes irreversible brain damage. So detecting it in children is too late. It is that canary in the coalmine: it’s already too late. We have just altered the life course trajectory of an entire generation of Flint children.”
See the rest of the story in The Guardian:
Article submitted by, Great Gazoo
