What About Lead?

City of Flint - click here to return to the utility page.

July 2019 - Flint, Mich., still hasn't recovered from an epidemic of lead-contaminated drinking water that began in 2014 and exposed an estimated 12,000 children to water with high levels of lead. Water utility managers in Flint are taking steps to reduce lead levels in water, but the EPA still instructs all Flint residents with lead-based water service lines to continue filtering their drinking water until lead levels in households return to lower levels.

Under the federal Lead and Copper Rule, lead concentrations must be below 15 parts per billion, or ppb, in 90 percent of households sampled. If this legal limit is exceeded, the water utility must apply measures to control lead leaching from water pipes. It's clear from the results in the table below and the subsequent testing that the city still has an issue with lead.

Number of lead samples taken in 2019: 1,701

Highest level detected in 2019: 177.0 ppb

Levels of lead detected

Complying with the EPA's lead rules doesn't mean that the water is safe for children to drink. The EPA’s recent modeling suggests that lead concentrations in the 3.8 to 15 ppb range can put a formula-fed baby at risk of elevated blood lead levels. In 2009, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment set a public health goal level of 0.2 ppb for lead in drinking water to protect against even subtle IQ loss in children.

Lead Results, 2019

Read more about lead here.