Summary: Chapters 9–11

In Chapter 9, Hanna-Attisha remembers her trip to Six Flags AutoWorld, an amusement park built by GM in Flint in the 1980s. It painted a rosy picture of American industry and ignored the darker side, such as the Native Americans being forced off their land to build Flint. AutoWorld ended up being a failure and closed shortly after Hanna-Attisha’s childhood visit.

Michael Moore (born 1954) made a documentary, Roger and Me, about Flint and the auto industry. The movie doesn’t make Flint or GM look good. It mentions AutoWorld. Hanna-Attisha says that, with the movie, “[Michael Moore] opened my eyes to how wishful thinking can . . . obscure the facts, leaving out inconvenient truths.”

Hanna-Attisha did her clinical training in Flint, fed up with the bad press. She says the auto industry had used and discarded the people of Flint, but the city has great hope.

Hanna-Attisha gives a history of Flint. Before cars were manufactured there, carriages were, and there were many immigrants. Later, six million African Americans fled to Flint. Discrimination made it difficult for them to get jobs and housing, and schools were segregated. There are also a lot of stories of workers forming unions to be treated fairly by their companies. There were several strikes. She learned a lot of history from her brother, Mark. His stories motivated Hanna-Attisha to make sure her pediatric residents took a tour of Flint.

Hanna-Attisha talks about some other figures in Michigan. Governor Frank Murphy was a progressive reformer who defended auto workers. Dr. Ossian Sweet (1895–1960) was a Black doctor from Detroit who moved his family to a white neighborhood. Both suffered consequences for trying to buck the status quo. Murphy was targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Sweet was tried for murder when someone was killed in a riot near his house.

After AutoWorld closed, the downward trend in Flint continued. Many people left. There are a lot of poor, Black neighborhoods, and the population is down. GM pulled out of Flint entirely. Hanna-Attisha knows that “The greatest forces working against the city were racism and corporate greed.” Still, Hanna-Attisha believes people who live in Flint are tenacious.

Governor Snyder seemed like he was going to help Flint. However, he was enthusiastically behind the emergency manager law that hurt its residents. The EM had to balance the books, no matter the cost, and the costs were great.

In Chapter 10, at Batanzo’s suggestion, Hanna-Attisha contacts Flint’s congressman, Dan Kildee (born 1958), to ask for his help in getting the blood-lead level tests for Flint kids. After her frustration at not getting answers to her emails, this seems like a hopeful avenue. At the same time, Marc Edwards is posting the water testing results, which are high. Hanna-Attisha wants to meet Edwards, but Batanzo worries his intensity will frighten people.

Jenny LaChance, a research coordinator, begins to help Hanna-Attisha. Soon, the data shows a marked increase in lead in the water. But data needs to be carefully analyzed. For example, not every child who visits the Hurley Clinic is on Flint water, and some children might have been tested more than once. Hanna-Attisha starts her residents on analyzing the data they have and looking at before and after the water source was switched. At the end of the meeting, Jenny approaches her, concerned about her own baby, who has been nursing, since Jenny has been drinking Flint water at the clinic. Hanna-Attisha reassures her.

The following day, Jenny contacts Hanna-Attisha to let her know that she has some results. The children’s blood-lead level has been higher since the switch. Still, Hanna-Attisha knows they’ll need a larger sample and better data. They have to get approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) because it’s data concerning human subjects. This is to prevent abuse of data, such as in Tuskegee, where Black men with syphilis were studied without consent and without treatment. Hanna-Attisha knows it is necessary but frets about the time. Meanwhile, Brad Wurfel at MDEQ is criticizing Marc Edwards. Hanna-Attisha says, “I knew already which side of history Wurfel and his MDEQ bosses would be on.”

In Chapter 11, Hanna-Attisha tells the story of Charles Kettering (1876–1958), an engineer and inventor, who is a well-known name in Flint. Buildings are named after him, and Hanna-Attisha’s father once won the “Boss” Kettering award, GM’s highest engineering award. But Hanna-Attisha says he is a public health villain because it was under him that GM introduced lead gasoline to control engine knocks, even though lead had historically been known to be toxic to humans. He fought to keep lead in gasoline even as workers at the Standard Fuel Refinery exhibited paranoid, delusional behavior and even died.

Alice Hamilton (1869–1970) was a doctor, toxicologist, and Harvard professor. She fought against Kettering, who argued that tetraethyl lead gasoline (TEL) was completely safe and said they would take it off the market if anyone could prove it wasn’t. Although workers did have higher blood-lead levels, the surgeon general found that TEL wasn’t provably harmful. The author states that this shows the power of industry, analogizing cigarette companies and gun manufacturers.

The chapter traces the history of lead, which is also used in paint to make it brighter. It was also used as a food additive. Some think it contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire and that Vincent Van Gogh sucked on a paintbrush that had lead residue on it. Even though the government also knew lead paint was dangerous, many blamed the victims for letting their children be exposed to lead paint chips.

Lead paint and lead plumbing weren’t taken off the market until the 1980s. Leaded gasoline was taken off the market in 1986. Before industrialization, children never had lead in their bodies. Greed has caused it to be prevalent. But now that lead is no longer in paint, Hanna-Attisha says, many doctors don’t suspect it as the culprit when children get sick. If kids do have lead poisoning, it is usually because of lead paint chips or even being shot. They never check the water because “the eyes don’t see what the mind doesn’t know.”

Analysis: Chapters 9–11

There is a thread throughout the book about General Motors and its relationship with workers and the people of Flint. A large company can take on almost a paternal role in its employees’ lives, leading them to settle in a particular town with the promise of work so that they are at the mercy of that company. In the previous section and this one, Hanna-Attisha tells of her father’s work for GM and how her father was fortunate not to be laid off when other workers were. Now, GM is aware of the problem with the corrosive water, but it quietly changes it. Ignoring the problems it has caused is a pattern in GM’s history, Hanna-Attisha notes. Rather than trying to keep its workers and, indeed, the customers for its products safe, GM frequently ignores that duty and tries to save money and time.

General Motors is not alone in its history of corruption. The city of Flint has a history of segregation based on race, income, and opportunity, beginning in the 1920s. By the 1960s and 1970s, the city experienced “white flight,” or the movement of white people away from areas of racial or cultural diversity. By the 1980s, the once isolated poverty of Floral Park and St. John Street had spread throughout the city. This situation had a negative impact on property values and industry in the area, which, in turn, negatively impacted local government and its ability to respond to emergencies.

Sometimes people do bad things because of corruption, but other times, Hanna-Attisha says, it is willful blindness. One of the heroes to come out of the story is Jenny LaChance. She gets to work and finds the data Hanna-Attisha is looking for. But Jenny also has a personal stake in the form of her own concerns for her unborn baby and for herself when she drinks Flint water. Still, Jenny is a fighter for the good cause. Meanwhile, Brad Wurfel is trying to preserve his own job by sweeping the lead problem under the rug.