Study Finds a Crisis of Confidence in America’s Tap Water. The Sharpest Level of Distrust in Drinking Water Provided by the Government is in Black and Latino Communities

From [HERE] Distrust of tap water is on the rise in the U.S. In 2018, roughly 60 million Americans didn’t drink their tap water, according to a study led by a researcher at Pennsylvania State University—a 40% increase compared with four years earlier.

The rise, which was sharpest in Black and Hispanic communities, followed the drinking-water crisis that broke out in Flint, Mich., in 2014, when a change in the city’s water source led to complaints of brown, foul-smelling water. Despite early assurances by state and federal officials that the water was safe, scientists found that it contained extraordinarily high levels of lead, a potent neurotoxin. The public health emergency hit a city already struggling with crime, job loss and a shrinking population that could barely support its infrastructure.

Flint’s water crisis was widely publicized, but it is hardly unique: Washington, D.C., Chicago and Newark have also grappled with lead in their water systems. In the past decade, drinking water emergencies struck Toledo, Ohio, and Charleston, W.Va., where residents were told not to drink or bathe in the water in their homes. State governments had to ship bottled water by the tractor-trailer load to hundreds of thousands of people.

“The fundamental problem with drinking water is that we are continuing to live off the investments of our great-grandparents,” said Erik Olson, a senior director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “Most drinking water to this day is still being delivered through pipes that are many decades old and being treated using World War I-era technology.” [MORE]