Flint Fertility Rates Fall; Fetal Deaths Climb During Water Crisis: Research

FLINT, MI — Fertility rates fell and fetal deaths increased in Flint after the beleaguered city switched its water supply to one that exposed the city’s 100,000 residents to dangerous amounts of lead, according to new research from the University of Kansas released Wednesday. Researchers David Slusky and Daniel Grossman compared Flint birth and death certificates with those in other Michigan cities both before the 2014 water supply switch and after.

The effects of lead poisoning on fertility and birth outcomes are not well-established, though in the early 20th century, American pharmacists gave lead pills to women who wanted to have abortions, the researchers said, noting their research supports a correlation. They found that during the period the water was contaminated, fertility rates decreased by 12 percent among women in Flint compared with women in other Michigan cities, while fetal death rates rose by 58 percent.

“This represents a couple of hundred fewer children born that otherwise would have been,” Slusky, an economics professor at the University of Kansas, said in a news release. Co-author Grossman is an economics professor at the University of West Virginia. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Flint Patch, click here to find your local Michigan Patch. Also, follow us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Flint switched its water supply to the Flint River from the cleaner but more expensive water drawn from Lake Huron in 2014 while the financially struggling city was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager.

The researchers said the data also suggests the overall health of children born in Flint decreased when compared with those born in other Michigan cities. Birth weights declined 5 percent among Flint babies during the period the water was contaminated. The researchers also noted an increase in miscarriages and stillbirths.

Based on data in the American Time Use Survey, which measures the amount of time people spend engaged in various activities, Flint women weren’t having sex less often than their counterparts in other Michigan cities.

“We find no evidence of avoidance behavior,” Slusky said in the news release. “Either Flint residents were unable to conceive children, or women were having more miscarriages during this time.”

Citing evidence that male fetuses are more fragile, Slusky said the data show a higher ratio of girls born in Flint during the period of water contamination.

The researchers also analyzed Google Trends data to see when Flint residents began online searches related to “lead” and “lead poisoning.” They saw no increase, which would have indicated a concern about the effects of lead in water and may have influenced behavioral changes related to having children.

Flint residents’ online searches about lead didn’t increase until September 2015, when city and state officials finally acknowledged a problem with the water.

“During most of our time period when the city officials were saying there was no problem, we didn’t see any evidence of knowledge about lead in the water,” Slusky said in the release.

The researchers said Flint’s environmental crisis provides wide-ranging lessons for cities and states. Lead poisoning is still a concern in most communities, especially those where older lead pipes are still in use and those with older homes that might have lead paint.

Flint also provides a lesson in the role of public health and environmental oversight, the researchers said. Much of the research uncovering the dangerously high levels of lead in Flint’s water supply came from private engineering companies and health professionals, including Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician at Flint’s Hurley Children’s Hospital whose September 2015 study showed the number of children with above-average levels of lead in their blood had nearly doubled since the city switched its water supply.

“We were drinking contaminated water in a city that is literally in the middle of the Great Lakes, in the middle of the largest source of fresh water in the world,” Hanna-Attisha has said. “This corrosive, untreated water created a perfect storm for lead to leach out of our plumbing and into the bodies of our children.”

Slusky said the findings provide important information as policy leaders decide funding for state and federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others responsible for environmental inspections and oversight.

“In the future,” he said in the news release, “we would like to have a government that is more responsive and more active in ensuring that the water that comes out of people’s taps is safe.”

So far, 15 people have been criminally charged in the investigation into the water crisis. They include five people charged in June with involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of 12 people who died of Legionnaire’s disease after the water switch. They include Nick Lyon, the director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services; former state-appointed emergency manager Darnell Earley, who oversaw the city’s finances during the time the water supply was switched; former Flint Water Plant manager Howard Croft; and two Michigan Department of Environmental Quality administrators, drinking water chief Liane Shekter-Smith and water supervisor Stephen Busch.

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