Monday, April 13, 2020

The Science Behind the EPAs Water Crisis Research Paper

The Science Behind the EPA's Water Crisis Research PaperAnyone who has done any kind of Flint water crisis research knows that there are just too many unanswered questions. You know the drill: find out how long the city and water company has known about the lead contamination, the amount of chemicals used in the city's treatment process, and what it says about the treatment of the treated water and the overall quality of the water in Flint. These things alone could fill volumes, but the real problems in the city have only become more apparent since the EPA's water research paper was released.Not only did the EPA question the use of chlorine as a treatment for Flint's water, but they questioned whether or not there should be any testing of the treated water. Since the case is still unclear at this point, the EPA went ahead and performed their own tests, determining whether or not that test was appropriate and if so, how to perform it and how to deal with unexpected problems that may o ccur while the testing is going on.The EPA's Flint water crisis research paper questions the use of chlorine, arguing that the problem is only likely to surface when bacteria are present. But, now that the City of Flint has committed to buying bottled water for residents, it's much easier to understand why they would want to keep using chlorine to kill the bacteria in the water.With the growing number of lawsuits against the city, this raises a lot of questions, especially if the cases have been publicized on the local news and in the local press, especially in the public affairs section. But, what does it all mean? It means that it's too difficult to know exactly what's going on and that the people of Flint are going to have to wait until the EPA and Michigan's attorney general are finishing investigating to get answers.This also raises the question of how involved the federal government is in all of this. The EPA has said that the cause of the disaster in Flint can be attributed t o the faulty treatment of the city's water, but in order to find out the truth, they need to get access to records that are kept by the city and its treatment facility.So, what's the connection between using bottled water and the end of the chlorination in Flint? It turns out that the entire bottled water issue can be traced back to the first report on the lead contamination of the water in Flint. That report came from a group called the Center for Environmental Health, which isn't exactly a high-quality source for information on the state of health in Flint, Michigan.Also, another group that was involved in the research on the water crisis was the SouthWest Research Institute, which is a public relations group. In addition to linking bottled water to Flint, they also noted that there were two studies that found contamination of the water in Flint and two other water contamination studies in Minnesota.Yet, one of the most interesting aspects of the latest study in the EPA's report i s that it was published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. The studies were conducted at the University of Maryland, a university that has had a controversial past on environmental safety issues, particularly with its laboratory procedures on lethal doses of toxins. So, the EPA's water crisis research paper should be taken with a grain of salt.

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