Today the headlines read, “High Lead Levels in Michigan Kids” as if it was only just discovered.

Many bubbles in water close up, abstract water wave with bubbles

However, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) knew of the dangers in Flint, Michigan as far back as 2003. The media blankets the news day-after-day with its version of the “top story” so we narrowly focus on something that serves as a cover to distract us from something much bigger.

In this specific case, the media downplays the true danger that is – lead poisoning. Politicians make the Michigan Governor the scapegoat, urging his resignation in order to make it look like the government is handling the situation. They pass blame instead of highlighting the fact that lead is a neurotoxin in the same category as mercury, arsenic and fluoride and needs to be removed.

Side view of plastic water bottles in a row. 

Instead of reassuring everyone that lead can be filtered from the water, and empowering people by providing everyone with carbon filters, the government instead highlights its effort to supply bottled water to every resident of Flint, which amounts to one bottle per day per resident, and carries its own toxicity issues. The only winners in this story are the bottled water companies who profit off of water that belongs to all of us.

While the media distracts our attention to Flint, there are “bigger fish” stories that exist and require our attention. The problems of toxic public water supplies are not only the result of infrastructure that tie to old, leaded water pipes, but also to the water quality of contaminated watersheds (river sources) not covered under clean-water laws that limit toxic pollutants.

Water Threats

Image by Mariusz Prusaczyk

Some of the bigger water-related threats to us and the planet that go unreported in mainstream media include:

  1. August 2015 Gold Mine disaster in Colorado that sent 3 million gallons of contaminated wastewater (lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, uranium, cyanide, sulfuric acid, etc.) into rivers that supply drinking water to at least three states (Colorado, New Mexico and Utah) as well as the Navajo Nation. The spill resulted from a blow-out, a risk that EPA knew about, but are washing their hands of any responsibility.
  2. November 2015 Mining disaster in Brazil, from the Samarco mine in an area where around 150,000 people are still reliant on deliveries of drinking water.  “The best thing that can happen now is for the mud to flow out to sea as quickly as possible,” said Antonio de Padua Almeida, a biologist and head of the local Comboios nature reserve. “The mud will have much greater impact on the river than on the sea.”
  3. Discovery of PFOA’s (Perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as C8), chemicals from Dupont’s Teflon manufacturing process, that are now pervasive around the world though the water systems. “DuPont pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA powder through the outfall pipes of the Parkersburg facility into the Ohio River. The company dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA-laced sludge into ‘‘digestion ponds’’: open, unlined pits on the Washington Works property, from which the chemical could seep straight into the ground. PFOA entered the local water table, which supplied drinking water to the communities of Parkersburg, Vienna, Little Hocking and Lubeck — more than 100,000 people in all.”
  4. Various pharmaceutical hormones and anti-depressants make their way to public water that cannot be filtered out, including chemicals like triclosan used in hand sanitizers, which creates chloroform when mixed with tap water. Triclosan is an antimicrobial chemical known to affect thyroid function.
  5. Perchlorate now in all surface waters comes from rocket fuel, a known goitrogen that affects the thyroid – along with chloride and fluoride in the water. And one likely reason for an epidemic of thyroid disease.
  6. Nitrates in ground water from pesticide run-off which affect fertility.
  7. Irradiated water coming from Fukushima all along the West Coast and Hawaii responsible for changing the fish and killing off the most sensitive species.
  8. The 2010 BP Oil disaster in the Gulf —and the addition of the toxic chemical Corexit still harming sea life.
  9. Fracking water being used to irrigate edible crops like fruits and vegetables in numerous states like Texas and California.

The big threat in the 1990s, after leaded gasoline had been phased out in the 1980s (to protect the catalytic converter of cars first, and health second), was the continued exposure of the population to lead in soil, and in lead-based paint in old homes and housing projects all over the country.

Lifestyle portrait of young woman drinking water. 

Lead stays in the environment to cause harm unless it can be safely abated from the home, remediate it from the soil, and detoxify it from the body.

Lead has a half-life of 22 years. In the body the half-life is 28 days, but that is based on blood lead levels, and the majority of lead goes to the bones and teeth.

The Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry identifies:

  • Inorganic lead as the most common form of lead, is not metabolized in the liver, but is excreted in the feces.
  • Nearly all organic lead that is ingested is absorbed.
  • Organic lead compounds are metabolized in the liver.
  • Absorbed lead that is not excreted is exchanged primarily among three areas in the body:
    • Blood
    • bones and teeth, which typically contain the vast majority of the lead body burden
    • Soft tissue (liver, kidneys, lungs, brain, spleen, muscles, and heart)
  • The problem with blood tests is they don’t measure total body burden

In the 1990s, people knew lead exposure was a huge problem for inner city children who lived around it, breathed it, and ate lead paint chips, which the medical community calls Pica – an eating disorder. The research found that between 10% and 30% of kids ages of 1 to 6 years have the eating disorder, pica (does not rhyme with Zika), characterized by persistent and compulsive cravings to eat nonfood items that can result in serious health problems. Common sense would characterize pica as the body’s craving for minerals in children with nutrient-poor diets.

For decades, the big problem was not only lead in the water due to leaded pipes, which did exist and still does, it was the system and the politicians who neglected these children all over the country who were growing up while being dumbed down by lead toxicity from multiple sources.

Knowing the real story about on ongoing lead exposures, the concern raised about Flint, Michigan is too little, too late. We should not only be highlighting the pervasive problem of lead-in-water, but also water contamination from other known exposures. We should all acknowledge the fact that little to nothing is being done to protect public health from the agencies created for the purpose to protect human health and the environment.

Hush Hush

The problem is two-fold, 1) the failure of government scientists to acknowledge a problem, 2) failure of agencies like the EPA to do their job to protect Public Health. Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech civil engineering professor who helped expose the Flint water crisis says, “pressures put on academics to secure funding are forcing scientists to abandon work done in the public interest and that similar financial motives are causing government science agencies to ignore inconvenient truths—like high levels of lead in public drinking water.”

Government-sanctioned news uses fear porn and uncertainty to trigger an emotional response. It is that e-motion (energy in motion) that they use to control our thoughts and actions. And it’s also that emotion they use to drain us from thinking for ourselves.

The focus on Zika isn’t really about concern for the babies. It’s exactly what journalist Jon Rappoport describes as a Psy Op, a psychological operation to make us feel powerless. That’s the strategy. It’s a program. It’s the web they weave to capture us.

Solutions to Industry-Created Problems

The media serves a function to distract us from thinking. They use our own emotions against us.

In order to unweave the web, we have to deprogram ourselves. Unlearn what we’ve learned. Not allow fear to drive our actions. Transform emotions of fear into love. Because love is a place of strength and a place of empowerment. When we talk about energy or emotion, we’re talking about vibration. And the strongest vibration is love, the power of love (vs. the love of power).

Being fearless means we can see these news stories for what they are and begin the process of coming up with real solutions. And if our politicians ignore those solutions because they are industry-driven which is profit-driven, then we start solving the problems ourselves using the latest in water-cleansing and radiation-neutralizing technologies.

Practically, we can build immunity by increasing nutrients through organic foods (kelp for iodine against known goitrogens and radiation), and supplements like lyposomal vitamin C. We can detoxify the body so it can easily excrete the toxins we take in on a daily basis. We can utilize scalar technologies against radiation and other EMF protection products that we can carry on our body. We must find new ways of protecting ourselves, since it has already been established that government officials do not feel obligated to do so.

Rosanne Lindsay is a Naturopath, Earth Keeper, liberty-lover, and author of the book The Nature of Healing, Heal the Body, Heal the Planet. Find her on Facebook at Natureofhealing and her website at natureofhealing.org.

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