There's another terrifying public health crisis in Michigan

Getty Images/Brett Carlsen

The nation is rightly outraged over the scandal in Flint, Michigan, where an estimated 8,000 children in the mostly poor and black community may have been exposed to high levels of lead in their drinking water for the past two years before the scandalous mismanagement of the city’s water system was finally exposed.

Blame for the tragedy that paralyzed the community and threatens the health and long-term development of thousands of children rests with everyone from Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and the former state financial overseers of Flint to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Experts say it could take many years and hundreds of millions of dollars to replace Flint’s old and corroded water pipes and connections to homes and business. And only time will tell how many young children who were exposed to lead-poisoned water will suffer brain disorders and developmental problems.

Ironically, as horrendous as this public health and environmental crisis is, it is more than matched by another environmental pollution catastrophe that has festered in the open for decades in southwestern Detroit without much outcry and consigned many thousands of mostly low-income and African American residents to a debilitating and often deadly respiratory disease.

Zoe Schlanger of Newsweek last week provided a vivid description of the beleaguered working class community of River Rouge, located about 70 miles south of Flint, where many residents stricken by asthma and related problems  are literally gasping for breath and choking on emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and other toxic emissions.

Newsweek told the story of Jacqueline Cason, 38, who suffered a mild case of asthma while she lived in Mississippi and but now faces frequent life threatening attacks since moving with her family to River Rouge.

“Now she’s awakened in the morning, three days a week, at least, and sometimes seven, by an asthma attack,” according to the report. “She gasps, desperately sipping the air but inhaling little or none. ‘It’s like being a fish out of water,’ she says.”

Getty Images/Brett CarlsenMany others have told similar stories.

Much like Dante’s third ring of hell, the tiny city of River Rouge (population 7,000) is inundated with more than 50 major industrial operations.

Those include two post-World War II vintage coal-fired power plants owned by DTE Energy – the major utility company -- that spew 34,000 tons of sulfur dioxide every year. DTE Energy’s southwest Detroit complex is one of five industrial facilities in Michigan that are out of compliance with federal air pollution standards when operating at full capacity. 

On nearby Zug Island, U.S. Steel blast furnaces daily blot out the sun with their dusty orange emissions that add to the area’s public health crisis.

Sulfur dioxide emissions are produced largely by metal extraction from ores and by power plant and refineries. The emissions smell like rotten eggs and can cause coughing and a burning sensation in the eyes. Experts say that prolonged exposure to SO2 can result in asthma-like symptoms in individuals without asthma and can aggravate existing cardiovascular disease.

Nationwide, 19 million adults and seven million children currently have asthma, according to government figures. The respiratory disease causes two million hospital emergency room visits and almost 4,000 deaths annually. 

Michigan has a higher percentage of adults and children with asthma and a higher rate of hospitalization for the illness than the rest of the country. Over the years, River Rouge has become the asthma capital of the state. More than 15 percent of the Detroit area’s adults suffer from asthma, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.  That’s nearly a third higher rate of asthma victims than for the rest of the state.

Getty Images/Brett CarlsenMoreover, asthma is far more prevalent among blacks and the poor than among whites. And the asthma mortality rate among blacks is more than double the rate among whites.

“So many people around River Rouge have asthma that there’s a bootleg market for inhalers (street value: $15 to $20 a pop) and the blister packs of albuterol, the stimulant medicine that fuels nebulizers ($10 a dose),” according to Newsweek. “Buying on the block is easier than going to a doctor, especially since the nearest asthma clinic is at least a town away or more, depending where you live.”

Much has been written and said about Detroit’s economic revival since it emerged from bankruptcy in December 2014, especially the revitalization of the downtown and river front areas and a drive to attract high tech industries to the city. But that economic renaissance still has a long way to go, and many areas remain blighted, abandoned or – in the case of River Rouge – horribly industrialized and polluted.

Plants in the area have been in violation of federal sulfur dioxide regulations for years, even while the pollution has threatened the health and lives of many residents. Lynn Fiedler, chief of air quality with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, said in an interview Monday that her agency has been trying to force DTE Energy and four other companies into compliance with federal standards, but the negotiations have been difficult.

The problem, she said, is that while many of these facilities have violated the regulations in the past, they currently are technically in compliance when operating at less than full capacity, according to air pollution monitors. These companies have argued that they see no need to upgrade their anti-pollution equipment, which would come at a huge cost to their investors.

However, computer simulation modeling indicates that DTE Energy and the others would be in violation of EPA air quality standards any time they stepped up their energy production to full capacity. Now the state is pressuring them to accept an emissions reduction plan that would pass muster with the EPA that would keep them in compliance at any time.

“We’re putting together a plan to make that enforceable and they have started taking the first steps to do that,” Fiedler said. “We will have a plan into EPA relatively shortly that we think will demonstrate that we can get the five companies into a place where they can meet the standard at all times.”

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