Physician colleagues at Hurley Medical Center, where Hanna-Attisha is director of the Pediatric Public Health Initiative, voted in May to banish the words “lead poisoned” to describe what happened after the city switched its water source to the Flint River in April 2014 as a money-saving measure.
He argued that the increase in Flint children’s blood lead levels was not significant, and that the term “lead poisoning” stigmatizes an entire generation of Flint children.
"But at the same time, we have learned so much —and we now know about the population-level sub-clinical impact.
After more than a year of denials by state and city officials that the water was unfit for human consumption, Hanna-Attisha released in September 2015 her initial research that showed a statistically significant increase in the number of Flint kids with elevated blood levels after the water switch.
After the switch, the percentage of children with elevated blood lead levels above the federal "reference level" of 5 micrograms per deciliter was nearly double.
"And so they mix the formula every day, six to eight times a day, and feed their infant, and the water is lead contaminated."
Asked if he agrees that infants consuming water-mixed formula were most in danger of high levels of lead exposure, Gomez said, "(W)e currently don’t have any scientific research to support that."
"That’s what public health is all about.
By contrast, Gomez’s studied 15,817 blood lead levels of Flint children taken over 10 years.
At levels below that, lead robs the average child of about half an IQ point.