Michigan Health Department Hid Evidence of
Health Harm Due to Lead Contaminated W
Allowed False Public Assurances by MIDEG and
SEOneWal fed Outside Researchers
After missing warning signs of spiking childhood lead poisoning that occurred a
few months after switching to a corrosive river water source in 2014, outside
pressure forced officials at the Michigan Department of Health and Human
Services (DHHS) to closely scrutinize their data in July 2015. They discovered
scientifically conclusive evidence of an anomalous increase in childhood lead
poisoning summer 2014 immediately after the switch in water sources, but stood
by silently as MDEQ officials repeatedly and falsely stated that no spike in blood
lead levels (BLL) of children had occurred. DHHS employees later stonewalled
efforts by outside researchers who questioned MDEQs statements, withheld
damning documents but released incomplete data suggesting that there were no
problems—DHHS officials ultimately fessed up only after incidence of childhood
lead poisoning skyrocketed above 10% in the two Flint zip codes with
highest water lead risk during summer 2015!
DHHS Pressured to Examine Data in mid-July 2015
DHHS’ engagement in the Flint water crisis, started in early 2015 with two phone
calls from Lee-Anne Walters to a state lead poisoning nurse in Lansing identified
only as “Karen.” When asked about the phone call last night, Walters said she was
at first expressing concern over high water lead measurements in Flint, but on
the second call she was in tears because her son’s blood lead had increased to 6.5
ug/dL.
According to Walters, “Karen” stated that “He is barely lead poisoned. If
CDC had not changed their lead poisoning standard from 10 down to
5, we would not be having this conversation.” Angry, Walters protested
that Karen was minimizing the problem, at which point “Karen” cut her off and
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said “f am working with kids in their 40’s and 50’s. It is just a few IQ
points...it is not the end of the world.” FOIA e-mails demonstrate that
Karen Lishinski (DHHS) acknowledged receiving phone calls on the dates
Walters called (the caller’s name is redacted in the FOIA), but elsewhere
Lishinski acknowledges to colleagues that the last time she actually worked with a
child who had blood lead above 45 ug/dL was in 2009.
The next time the Flint water issue was apparently raised at DHHS, was July 23",
when Linda Dkykema (DCH) sent out an e-mail titled “R.E.Director’s Office
Assignment- Flint- need update ASAP’ on the heels of the meme written by
eR A AR EEE te i ERD
Misinformed from the Outset: MDEG Garbage-in AH but Ensures DHHS
Garbage-out
The Director’s Office update was tainted and probably doomed from the start,
because Dykema logically reached out to MDEQ’s Steve Busch for background
who provided her the following insights:
“The city of Flint recently conducted drinking water testing
throughout the city with special attention to those areas known to
have old service lines. The city water supply is in compliance with
the lead rule....DEQ has not seen a change in the city’s compliance
with the lead rule since switching to the Flint River
source....Regarding the home with high drinking water lead levels:
some years ago the supply line that serves the neighborhood was
replaced, but somehow this house was not connected to the new line,
such that the family’s drinking water supply was coming from the
old corroded lead pipe. None of the neighbors water had elevated
lead level... Regarding the EPA drinking water official quoted in the
press articles: the report that he issued was a result of his own
research and was not reviewed or approved by EPA management.
He has essentially acted outside his authority.”
In other words, Dykema and DHHS started out their investigation with
demonstrably false MDEO talking points as assumptions. Nonetheless, a team of
researchers proceeded to examine their data for possible increased incidence of
lead poisoning in Flint’s children after the water switch.
Anomalous Increase in Lead Polsoning Noted-—But False Conclusion
Provided Publicly by MDEQ
The DHHS team immediately found evidence of a problem. Specifically, in the
summer months of July, August and September of 2014 immediately after the
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switch, blood lead levels in Flint had been much higher than normal. On July 27%
of 2015, an e-mail asked “can you quickly run any tests to see if the difference in
the first graph is statistically significant,” and the result quickly came back that it
was. The team tried to re-run the data adding extra years to see if it changed the
conclusions, but it did not because “there does appear to be a higher proportion
of EBLL <lead poisoning> last summer than usual.”
A July 28# e-mail summarized the exercise by noting “This doesn’t say
anything about causality, but it does warrant further investigation ”
and a two page memo was created for the Director’s Office (see excerpt Figure 1).
The “quick detection of abnormal variation’ in July, warranting further
investigation, does not seem to have gone any further, and the study results did
not seen the light of day until this FOIA request.
However, MDEQ’s Brad Wurfel did publicly begin stating that study had been
done, and using the results for public relations purposes as early as September
6", 2015. Ironically, it was used te ¢
* Virginia Tech:
dit data on hich lead in water collectec
are quest vandnagy the Virginia Teah findings
ate cn the saad tng tuatioe pe been date tm the scare
hoods all aver ‘the city for the past year , Says Brad
fe of sepurient of Enotronmental Quality « spokesman.
3 20de “a hos comducted toe rounds af testing in the peret
f the Dey partmen toefConununity Health conducts
food lowe lead testing in Pim. “With these kind of
at.
el sere, “woe weld heme & expected to be seeing a spike
the other dead mionitering iat goes on in the
In other words, Wurfel was completely misrepresenting the conclusions of the
DHHS July 2015 blood lead study—to claim there was no spike in children’s
blood lead when there was one. The FOIA does not reveal precisely where, or
how, Wurfel was so misinformed. But the record is also perfectly clear that DHHS
sat silently by as Wurfel repeated the false statements throughout the month of
September.
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gure 2 shows thel--on everege--t)
EBLL. during the summer months of July, Auge: ie A Sapient
» However even compered to the previous three years, the propor
highest during surmmer 2014 (Figure 2).
Based on the contro! chert for proportions (Figure 3), only the sw
August, and September had proportions of BOLL higher than that
warlation over time.
* Further, the summer months of 2014 were the only data points b
| April 2015 with EBLUL proportions above the average (mewn) of th
ati 3).
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Figure 1 — Excerpt from a two page memo in July 205 indicating Summer months
of 2014 when lead levels in Flint kids spiked
Outside Researchers Asking to Analyze Flint’s Blood Lead Data Were
Stonewalled: “Yikes!”
On September 2" 2015, Professor Marc Edwards of Virginia Tech (primary
author of this article and source of the Freedom of Information Act documents
cited herein) made a simple data request of DHHS. Edwards had previously
made an identical request in November 2006 for a blood lead study in Lansing,
and that data was provided without any problems. Edwards did not expect
problems this time.
His request sat without response until a reminder e-mail was sent, at which point
DHHS employee Robert Scott apologized for the delay, and provided the
information needed to process the request, acknowledging:
Yes, I think this <study> sounds great. There has been some concern
about the water source change in Flint, and in fact we had a call
about it today.
The request then sat another 3 days, at which point Edwards inquired again and
DHHS said that they were busy and if Edwards wanted the data in “a week
rather than a month or so-then please send me a paragraph
explaining why.” Edwards wrote:
Yes, I think there is clearly some urgency to the situation. MDEQ has
publicly stated that your blood lead records, are showing that there
is no public health concern for residents in Flint. The levels of lead in
Flint water, that we are finding in our water sampling, are certainly
in a range that can cause childhood lead poisoning. Indeed, one child
has already, likely been lead poisoned from exposure to high lead in
water. I think the fact that you already have other teams working on
these records, indicates a high level of interest, and urgency.
Congressional interest in the safety of the water is also very high,
and this will be an important issue in deciding options for treating
the water, in the weeks and months ahead.
If red flags about the data request had not already gone up, the e-mails clearly
show alarms were raised immediately throughout all of DHHS after Scott wrote
to colleges at 1:09 pm on September 11, 2015 that:
“The attached was submitted to me along with a request for de-
identified data, which should be no problem. When you have a few
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minutes you might want to take a look at it. Sounds like there might
be more te this than what we learned previously. Yikes!.”
A flurry of e-mails followed, and within the hour, Edwards request that Scott had
just said “should be no problem,” was in fact encountering all kinds of
problems. Specifically, a privacy specialist immediately asked for (amongst other
things):
“T want to know more about the study..Saying that the researcher
wants to verify the claim of MDEQ is not sufficient.... It does not have
to be a great deal longer, but it should explain what the intended use
of the blood lead data is. It is also important to know exactly how it
will be used for research in order to justify the release....”
The next few weeks were an exercise in frustration, during which it became
perfectly apparent to Edwards that DHHS had no interest in fulfilling the routine
data request.
In the meantime, emails during the same time period indicate that the state had
plenty of time scrutinizing the Virginia Tech data (e.g., “The issue has been
ongoing on for awhile now, but picked up steam in July when the Virginia Tech
folks got involved.”). Moreover, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha of Hurley Medical
Center had made her own data request in mid-September, and she was having
trouble getting it processed as well. Edwards wrote to DHHS on September 24th:
I just spoke to this young researcher at Hurley, and apparently, she
has been unable to get access to the state blood lead records. I have
to say, it is very disturbing that the state keeps issuing these blood
lead reports and statements in their press releases, and refuses to
share the data backing them up with outside researchers. Even
worse, state reps are running around claiming that these reports are
proof that Flint water is safe to drink. Can you tell me why it is so
difficult to get this data, and why your agency is raising so many
obstacles to sharing it with everyone who asks? I note that I have
been asking to see your data since MDEQ first sent it to reporters
back in August, and I count 10 e-mails that I sent responding to all
your questions. As of yet, you have given me nothing in response.
Yet you have been sending reporters one report after another. It
seems your agency is more interested in public relations than sound
science.
DHHS Scott immediately wrote to colleagues claiming “I’m not very happy
with him <Edwards> right now,” and drafted a response that apologized
for delays, his vacation, and acknowledging “my time has been largely
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taken up with my Department’s response to the current situation in
Flint.” Hence, the FOIA reveals that DHHS had created their own catch-
22: because they had stood and said nothing while MDEQ made false claims
about what the blood lead data showed, they had no time to provide data to
researchers that wanted to test the truthfulness of the claim.
Scott’s DHHS colleague Nancy Peeler asserted that Edwards e-mail had “intent
to escalate and spin things,” and that he (Scott) should not get “caught up in
that.” After reading the response, Edwards withdrew his request with a plea to let
Hanna-Attisha have access to the state’s data, and within an hour the two DHHS
employees were congratulating one another on their success:
DHHS Peeler to DHHS Robert Scott: “Really nice email, thanks.”
An Agency “more interested in public relations than sound science.”
Three sets of e-mails involving Peeler and Scott, sent within a day of the above
exchange, illustrate the unethical behavior occurring within DHHS at the time—
all in the name of public relations and at the expense of sound science.
1) “I’m Sure This One Is Not for the Public.” Unbeknownst to Edwards, the
day before he asserted in writing that DHHS was behaving unethically by hiding
results to help cover up the problem and discredit the findings of Hurley’s Mona
Hanna-Attisha—they were doing just that. At 3:45 pm on September 24", Scott
wrote an e-mail entitled “One more attempt to recreate Hurley.” The e-
mail confirmed that Mona-Hanna Attisha’s analysis showing that blood lead had
spiked after the switch to Flint River was verified with the DHHS data. But he
also noted that “I’m sure this one is not for the public.” When informed
that DHHS had knowledge supporting her analysis late last night, Hanna-Attisha
confirmed that the state never did share those results with her—rather, the record
shows DHHS was working full time to attack the idea there was any problem with
childhood lead poisoning in Flint.
2) DHHS Sends Scrubbed Data to Edwards, Hanna-Attisha and Dr.
Reynolds (Mott Children’s Health Center): But Withholds Damning
July Report. In response to Edwards request for the final data that supporting
Brad Wurfel’s months of assertions that blood lead was not increase, Scott
provided both Edwards and Hanna-Attisha with documentation. Unfortunately,
it was not the final DHHS memo from late July—that report demonstrated that
DHHS knew of a serious lead spike that occurred in summer of 2014. Instead,
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Scott sent a revised version of the data that had been created just two days before,
which had no mention of the statistically significant spike in childhood lead
poisoning. Likewise, responding to an earlier request from Dr. Reynolds, DHHS
considered sending the July report sent to the Directors Office and Governor, but
instead sent a revised version of the data with no hint of problems with blood
lead in Flint’s children.
3) Peeler’s “Secret Hope” is Granted to Handle Free Press Reporter.
Reporter Kristi Tanner from the Detroit Free Press was doing her own analysis of
the Flint blood lead trends. Repeating the approach of Hanna-Attisha using
DHSS data, comparing incidence of lead poisoning before to after the water
switch, Tanner demonstrated a statistically significant increase in childhood lead
poisoning. A flurry of DHHS e-mails to handle her analysis, went back and forth
in DHSS-none of it considered acknowledging that she was correct. After all,
Scott’s analysis showing the same thing, was surely “not for the public.”
Instead, the following exchange occurred between Peeler, Scott and DHHS public
relations.
DHSS Peeler to DHSS Scott (September 25, 2015 1:20 pm):
“TI think Bob is the best person to speak to them about the lead data, if
you are comfortable with that Bob. My secret hope is that we can
work in the fact that this pattern is similar to recent past. * .
DHHS Scott promptly delivered a quote (9/25/2015 1:19 pm):
“While the trend for Michigan as a whole has shown a steady
decrease in lead poisoning year by year, smaller areas such as the
city of Flint have their bumps from year to year while still trending
downwards overall. Does that sound reasonable?”
Public Relations to Robert Scott (DHSS) (9/25/2015 1:36 pm):
“7 like what you had to say. That’s basically what I told her be she
wants to hear it from someone other than a spokesperson. © Are
you available for a call with her.”
The smiley and happy faces ineerted in the above e- “mails, 2 are ingles part of the
did note the DHHS conclusion that the ir increase was “Seasonal and Hot
related to the water supply.”
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Also “Not for the Public:” Data That Caused the State to Admit
They Were Wrong.
By October 2™, the DHHS finally acknowledged that there was a serious problem
in Flint. It confirmed that children living in the two zip codes (48503 and 48504)
identinied by Virginia Tech has having highest lead in water risks , also hac
Vincidence of childhood lead poisoning after the switch to Flint River,
ut they have never, to date,
publicly released their in-house data demonstrating the extent of the problem.
Our FOIA reveals a shocking DHHS graph created in October 2015. It shows the
statistically significant spike in blood lead that occurred in summer 2014— the
scientific result that DHHS has never publicly acknowledged. Even more
horrifying, it also shows blood lead skyrocketing in summer of 2015, to the point
where 9.5-12.5 percent of children in Flint’s two high risk zip codes were lead
poisoned, This is in the range of Hurley’s more recent estimate that incidence of
childhood lead poisoning in some neiehborhoods was as high as 15%. It goes
without saying, surely, that this data was also “not for the public.”
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Se ggnerti oe Eley
aoe GOH Behe esa ee ©
ee ee ee
Figure 2: DHHS graph showing skyrocketing blood lead in 2nd and 3rd quarter
of 2015, in two Flint zip codes identified by Virginia Tech as having highest water
lead risk
FOIA Response Delayed by False Claims of “Litigation Hold” and “Attorney
GHent Privilege.”
DHHS fought hard to delay release of these documents. After the legal time
allowed for FOIA elapsed, and Edwards had paid for the request, DHSS
fabricated claims of a “Litigation Hold” and “Attorney Client Privilege” as cause
for further delays. We want to publicly thank Nancy Ratter for pointing out the
absurdity of these cla
his staff, who fought for release of these documents to us late Friday night.
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MDHHS emails obtained via FOIA requests regarding blood lead levels of kids in Michigan,
specifically in Flint
Download (PDF, 8. 04MB)
These are the first batch of emails. We will possibly be releasing a second set
sometime in January.
Primary Author: Dr. Marc Edwards
Acknowledgements: Siddhartha Roy
Nancy Grijalva
Assistant to Nick Lyon, Director
Michigan Department of Health and Human Services
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