The Sept. 10, 2019 PBS article accompanying the Frontline documentary "Deadly Water" was topped by a provocative headline: "The EPA Says Flint's Water is Safe — Scientists Aren't So Sure." The PBS story relied on a study of adverse health outcomes for people given point-of-use (POU) water filters during the Flint Federal Emergency.
We were astonished. Several of us worked closely with residents to first expose the problems with lead and Legionella that defined the Flint Water Crisis. We were supportive of later humanitarian efforts to provide Flint residents with the free point of use (POU) lead filters, since they effectively remove lead from water used for drinking and cooking. These off-the-shelf water filters are routinely used in about a third of U.S. homes, so we were mystified as to how they could have wrought such devastation when deployed in Flint.
We turned to the scientific study that PBS had cited, published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases (IJID) in early 2019. The study, by Gina Makiand colleagues at Henry Ford in Detroit, claimed that the human test subjects in Flint had a 70% rate of severe pneumonia, 10% rate of sepsis, and a 10% rate of folliculitis and half died from "bacterial infections" – implied to be Legionnaire's Disease – as a result of using the POU filters.
