Good News For Flint But Not For The Doomsayers
Dr. Hernan F. Gomez, a toxicologist, pediatrician and emergency physician at Flint’s Hurley Medical Center has authored a peer-reviewed study/paper that comes as good news for Flint women.
The Flint Journal is reporting that the study will be published next month in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and suggests that Flint water did not increase blood lead levels among women of childbearing age. In fact it stated as a result of the city’s water crisis that the lead exposure made it “extremely unlikely” they experienced an increase in stillborn deliveries.
Dr. Gomez and his team compared the blood lead levels from what the articled stated was a small sample of Flint women ages 12-50. They looked at their blood levels before, during and after residents were exposed to improperly treated water drawn from the Flint River in parts of 2014 and 2015.
The study stated:
Blood lead levels in Flint females of childbearing age did not increase during the Flint River water exposure and subsequent 18-month time period…Mean blood lead levels during the Flint River water exposure are not consistent with the markedly higher blood lead levels reported in the literature to be associated with fetal loss, low birth weight, or preterm birth.
Dr. Gomez also authored an earlier study in collaboration with other physicians, which was then published in “The Journal of Pediactrics," showing that the blood lead levels among Flint children in the midst of the water crisis were one-half of the average blood lead level of children in the city a decade earlier
It is good to be able to dispel some of the myths that came out of the Flint water crisis and especially when it is good news for the women and people of Flint. Let us hope that more good news continues to flow from the city of Flint.
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