Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha Reveals Elevated Blood Lead Levels in Flint Children

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician at Flint’s Hurley Medical Center, publicly releases research proving that children’s blood lead levels have doubled since the water switch, nearly tripling in the inner city. Her analysis compares blood lead data for children under 5 from January-September 2013 (before the water switch) with data from the same period in 2015 (after the switch).

Her findings are devastating: The incidence of elevated blood lead levels increased from 2.4% to 4.9% citywide after the water source change. In neighborhoods with the highest water lead levels, the percentage of children with unsafe blood lead levels rose from 4% to 10.6%—a 6.6 percentage point increase representing thousands of children with permanent neurological damage. In the poorest, most heavily Black neighborhoods, rates nearly tripled.

State officials immediately attack Dr. Hanna-Attisha’s credibility, with a Michigan Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson saying her research “unfortunate[ly]” creates “near hysteria.” The state releases its own analysis claiming to show no increase in blood lead levels, but Dr. Hanna-Attisha discovers they deliberately excluded data from the city’s highest-lead neighborhoods to manipulate the results.

She goes public with her findings before peer review—a career risk for any academic—because children were being poisoned every day that officials continued denying the crisis. Her courage in speaking truth to power while being attacked by the state exemplifies scientific integrity in service of public health. The research was later published in the prestigious American Journal of Public Health in February 2016, fully vindicating her findings.

Dr. Hanna-Attisha’s work, combined with Virginia Tech’s water testing, finally forces officials to acknowledge what residents had been saying for 18 months: the water is poisonous. Her advocacy continues today through the Flint Registry, tracking long-term health outcomes for exposed children.