This post first appeared at TomDispatch.

In truth, the United States has scores of "Flints" awaiting their moments.

“I know if I was a par­ent up there, I would be beside myself if my kids’ health could be at risk,” said Pres­i­dent Oba­ma on a recent trip to Michi­gan. ​“Up there” was Flint, a rust­ing indus­tri­al city in the grip of a ​“water cri­sis” brought on by a gov­ern­ment aus­ter­i­ty scheme. To save a cou­ple of mil­lion dol­lars, that city switched its source of water from Lake Huron to the Flint Riv­er, a long-time indus­tri­al dump­ing ground for the tox­ic indus­tries that had once made their home along its banks. Now, the city is enveloped in a pub­lic health emer­gency, with ele­vat­ed lev­els of lead in its water sup­ply and in the blood of its children.

The price tag for replac­ing the lead pipes that con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed its drink­ing water, thanks to the cor­ro­sive tox­ins found in the Flint Riv­er, is now esti­mat­ed at up to $1.5 bil­lion. No one knows where that mon­ey will come from or when it will arrive. In the mean­time, the cost to the chil­dren of Flint has been and will be incal­cu­la­ble. As lit­tle as a few specks of lead in the water chil­dren drink or in flakes of paint that come off the walls of old hous­es and are ingest­ed can change the course of a life. The amount of lead dust that cov­ers a thumb­nail is enough to send a child into a coma or into con­vul­sions lead­ing to death. It takes less than a tenth of that amount to cause IQ loss, hear­ing loss, or behav­ioral prob­lems like atten­tion deficit hyper­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der and dyslex­ia. The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol (CDC), the gov­ern­ment agency respon­si­ble for track­ing and pro­tect­ing the nation’s health, says sim­ply, ​“No safe blood lead lev­el in chil­dren has been identified.”

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma would have good rea­son to wor­ry if his kids lived in Flint. But the city’s chil­dren are hard­ly the only ones threat­ened by this pub­lic health cri­sis. There’s a lead cri­sis for chil­dren in Bal­ti­more, Mary­land, Her­cu­la­neum, Mis­souri, Sebring, Ohio, and even the nation’s cap­i­tal, Wash­ing­ton, D.C., and that’s just to begin a list. State reports sug­gest, for instance, that ​“18 cities in Penn­syl­va­nia and 11 in New Jer­sey may have an even high­er share of chil­dren with dan­ger­ous­ly ele­vat­ed lev­els of lead than does Flint.” Today, sci­en­tists agree that there is no safe lev­el of lead for chil­dren and at least half of Amer­i­can chil­dren have some of this neu­ro­tox­in in their blood. The CDC is espe­cial­ly con­cerned about the more than 500,000 Amer­i­can chil­dren who have sub­stan­tial amounts of lead in their bod­ies. Over the past cen­tu­ry, an untold num­ber have had their IQs reduced, their school per­for­mances lim­it­ed, their behav­iors altered, and their neu­ro­log­i­cal devel­op­ment under­mined. From coast to coast, from the Sun Belt to the Rust Belt, chil­dren have been and con­tin­ue to be imper­iled by a cen­tu­ry of indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion, com­mer­cial glut­tony, and aban­don­ment by the local, state, and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments that should have pro­tect­ed them. Unlike in Flint, the ​“cri­sis” sel­dom comes to pub­lic attention.

Two, Three… Many Flints

In Flint, the ori­gins of the cur­rent cri­sis lay in the his­to­ry of auto giant Gen­er­al Motors (GM) and its rise in the mid­dle decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry to the sta­tus of the world’s largest cor­po­ra­tion. GM’s Buick plant alone once occu­pied ​“an area almost a mile and a half long and half a mile wide,” accord­ing to the Chica­go Tri­bune, and sev­er­al Chevro­let and oth­er GM plants lit­er­al­ly cov­ered the water­front of ​“this auto­mo­tive city.” Into the Flint Riv­er went the tox­ic wastes of fac­to­ries large and small, which once sup­plied bat­ter­ies, paints, sol­ders, glass, fab­rics, oils, lubri­cat­ing flu­ids, and a mul­ti­tude of oth­er mate­ri­als that made up the mod­ern car. In these plants strung out along the banks of the Flint and Sag­i­naw rivers and their detri­tus lay the ori­gins of the present pub­lic health emergency.

The cri­sis that attract­ed Pres­i­dent Obama’s atten­tion is cer­tain­ly hor­ri­fy­ing, but the chil­dren of Flint have been poi­soned in one way or anoth­er for at least 80 years. Three gen­er­a­tions of those chil­dren liv­ing around Chevro­let Avenue in the old indus­tri­al heart of the city expe­ri­enced an envi­ron­ment filled with heavy met­al tox­ins that cause neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions in them and car­dio­vas­cu­lar prob­lems in adults.

As Michael Moore doc­u­ment­ed in his film Roger and Me, GM aban­doned Flint in a vain attempt to stave off finan­cial dis­as­ter. Hav­ing sucked its peo­ple dry, the com­pa­ny ditched the city, leav­ing it to deal with a pol­lut­ed hell with­out the means to do so. Like oth­er indus­tri­al cities that have suf­fered this kind of aban­don­ment, Flint’s pop­u­la­tion is major­i­ty African Amer­i­can and Lati­no, and has a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of fam­i­lies liv­ing below the pover­ty line. Of its 100,000 res­i­dents, 65% are African Amer­i­can and Lati­no and 42% are mired in poverty.

The pres­i­dent should be wor­ried about Flint’s chil­dren and local, state, and fed­er­al author­i­ties need to fix the pipes, sew­ers, and water sup­ply of the city. Tech­ni­cal­ly, this is a fea­si­ble, if expen­sive, propo­si­tion. It’s already clear, how­ev­er, that the polit­i­cal will is just not there even for this one com­mu­ni­ty. Gina McCarthy, the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency’s admin­is­tra­tor, has refused to pro­vide Flint’s res­i­dents with even a prospec­tive timetable for replac­ing their pipes and mak­ing their water safe. There is, how­ev­er, a far graver prob­lem that is even less easy to fix: the mix of racism and cor­po­rate greed that have put lead and oth­er pol­lu­tants into mil­lions of homes in the Unit­ed States. The scores of endan­gered kids in Flint are just the tip of a vast, tox­ic ice­berg. Even Bal­ti­more, which first iden­ti­fied its lead poi­son­ing epi­dem­ic in the 1930s, still faces a cri­sis, espe­cial­ly in large­ly African Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties, when it comes to the lead paint in its old­er hous­ing stock.

Just this month, Maryland’s sec­re­tary of hous­ing, com­mu­ni­ty, and devel­op­ment, Ken­neth C. Holt, dis­missed the nev­er-end­ing lead cri­sis in Bal­ti­more by cal­lous­ly sug­gest­ing that it might all be a shuck. A moth­er, he said, might fake such poi­son­ing by putting ​“a lead fish­ing weight in her child’s mouth [and] then take the child in for test­ing.” Such a tac­tic, he indi­cat­ed, with­out any kind of proof, was aimed at mak­ing land­lords ​“liable for pro­vid­ing the child with [bet­ter] hous­ing.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the atti­tudes of Holt and Gov­er­nor Rick Sny­der of Michi­gan have proven all too typ­i­cal of the ways in which America’s civic and state lead­ers have tend­ed to ignore, dis­miss, or sim­ply deny the real suf­fer­ing of chil­dren, espe­cial­ly those who are black and Lati­no, when it comes to lead and oth­er tox­ic chemicals.

There is, in fact, a grim broad­er his­to­ry of lead poi­son­ing in Amer­i­ca. It was prob­a­bly the most wide­ly dis­persed envi­ron­men­tal tox­in that affect­ed chil­dren in this coun­try. In part, this was because, for decades dur­ing the mid­dle of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, it was mar­ket­ed as an essen­tial ingre­di­ent in indus­tri­al soci­ety, some­thing with­out which none of us could get along com­fort­ably. Those tox­ic pipes in Flint are hard­ly the only, or even the pri­ma­ry, source of dan­ger to chil­dren left over from that era.

In the 1920s, tetraethyl lead was intro­duced as an addi­tive for gaso­line. It was laud­ed at the time as a ​“gift of God” by a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Eth­yl Cor­po­ra­tion, a cre­ation of GM, Stan­dard Oil, and Dupont, the com­pa­nies that invent­ed, pro­duced, and mar­ket­ed the stuff. Despite warn­ings that this indus­tri­al tox­in might pol­lute the plan­et, which it did, almost three-quar­ters of a cen­tu­ry would pass before it was removed from gaso­line in the Unit­ed States. Dur­ing that time, spewed out of the tailpipes of hun­dreds of mil­lions of cars and trucks, it taint­ed the soil that chil­dren played in and was tracked onto floors that tod­dlers touched. Banned from use in the 1980s, it still lurks in the envi­ron­ment today.

Mean­while, homes across the coun­try were taint­ed by lead in quite a dif­fer­ent way. Lead car­bon­ate, a white pow­der, was mixed with lin­seed oil to cre­ate the paint that was used in the nation’s homes, hos­pi­tals, schools, and oth­er build­ings until 1978. Though its pow­er to harm and even kill chil­dren who sucked on lead-paint­ed win­dowsills, toys, cribs, and wood­work had long been known, it was only in that year that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment banned its use in house­hold paints.

Hun­dreds of tons of the lead in paint that cov­ered the walls of hous­es, apart­ment build­ings, and work­places across the Unit­ed States remains in place almost four decades lat­er, espe­cial­ly in poor­er neigh­bor­hoods where mil­lions of African Amer­i­can and Lati­no chil­dren cur­rent­ly live. Right now, most mid­dle class white fam­i­lies feel rel­a­tive­ly immune from the dan­gers of lead, although the gen­tri­fi­ca­tion of old neigh­bor­hoods and the ren­o­va­tion of old homes can still expose their chil­dren to dan­ger­ous lev­els of lead dust from the old paint on those walls. How­ev­er, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and polit­i­cal­ly vul­ner­a­ble black and His­pan­ic chil­dren, many of whom inhab­it dilap­i­dat­ed old­er hous­ing, still suf­fer dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly from the dev­as­tat­ing effects of the tox­in. This is the mean­ing of insti­tu­tion­al racism in action today. As with the water flow­ing into homes from the pipes of Flint’s water sys­tem, so the walls of its apart­ment com­plex­es, not to men­tion those in poor neigh­bor­hoods of Detroit, Bal­ti­more, Wash­ing­ton, and vir­tu­al­ly every oth­er old­er urban cen­ter in the coun­try, con­tin­ue to poi­son chil­dren exposed to lead-pol­lut­ed dust, chips, soil, and air.

Over the course of the past cen­tu­ry, tens of mil­lions of chil­dren have been poi­soned by lead and mil­lions more remain in dan­ger of it today. Add to this the risks these same chil­dren face from indus­tri­al tox­ins like mer­cury, asbestos, and poly­chlo­ri­nat­ed biphenyls (bet­ter known as PCBs) and you have an ongo­ing recipe for a Flint-like dis­as­ter but on a nation­al scale.

In truth, the Unit­ed States has scores of ​“Flints” await­ing their moments. Think of them as tick­ing tox­ic time bombs – just an aus­ter­i­ty scheme or some official’s poor deci­sion away from a pub­lic health dis­as­ter. Giv­en this, it’s remark­able, even in the wake of Flint, how lit­tle atten­tion or pub­lic­i­ty such threats receive. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, then, there seems to be vir­tu­al­ly no polit­i­cal will to ensure that future gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren will not suf­fer the same fate as those in Flint.

The Future of America’s Tox­ic Past

A series of deci­sions by state and local offi­cials turned Flint’s chron­ic post-indus­tri­al cri­sis into a total pub­lic health dis­as­ter. If clue­less, cor­rupt, or heart­less gov­ern­ment offi­cials get all the blame for this (and blame they do deserve), the larg­er point will unfor­tu­nate­ly be missed – that there are many post-indus­tri­al Flints, many oth­er hid­den tragedies affect­ing America’s chil­dren that await their moments in the news. Treat Flint as an anom­aly and you con­demn fam­i­lies nation­wide to bear the dam­age to their chil­dren alone, aban­doned by a soci­ety unwill­ing to invest in clean­ing up a cen­tu­ry of indus­tri­al pol­lu­tion, or even to acknowl­edge the injus­tice involved.

Flint may be years away from a solu­tion to its cur­rent cri­sis, but in a few cities else­where in the coun­try there is at least a mod­icum of hope when it comes to devel­op­ing ways to begin to address this country’s poi­so­nous past. In Cal­i­for­nia, for exam­ple, 10 cities and coun­ties, includ­ing San Fran­cis­co, San Diego, Los Ange­les, and Oak­land, have suc­cess­ful­ly sued and won an ini­tial judg­ment against three lead pig­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers for $1.15 bil­lion. That mon­ey will be invest­ed in remov­ing lead paint from the walls of homes in these cities. If this judg­ment is upheld on appeal, it would be an unprece­dent­ed and path­break­ing vic­to­ry, since it would force a pol­lut­ing indus­try to clean up the mess it cre­at­ed and from which it profited.

There have been oth­er par­tial vic­to­ries, too. In Her­cu­la­neum, Mis­souri, for instance, where half the chil­dren with­in a mile of the nation’s largest lead smelter suf­fered lead poi­son­ing, jurors returned a $320 mil­lion ver­dict against Flu­or Cor­po­ra­tion, one of the world’s largest con­struc­tion and engi­neer­ing firms. That ver­dict is also on appeal, while the com­pa­ny has moved its smelter to Peru where whole new pop­u­la­tions are undoubt­ed­ly being poi­soned.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma hit the nail on the head with his recent com­ments on Flint, but he also missed the larg­er point. There he was just a few dozen miles from that city’s dam­aged water sys­tem when he spoke in Detroit, anoth­er sym­bol of cor­po­rate aban­don­ment with its own grim tox­ic lega­cy. Thou­sands of homes in the Motor City, the for­mer cap­i­tal of the auto indus­try, are still lead paint dis­as­ter areas. Per­haps it’s time to widen the can­vas when it comes to the poi­son­ing of America’s chil­dren and face the ter­ri­ble human toll caused by ​“the Amer­i­can century.”