Pregnant women and children warned away from Jackson, MS, water over lead levels

Officials in Jackson, Mississippi, are telling residents their water isn’t unsafe … but pregnant women and children should be careful, just in case, on account of some high lead levels. True, Jackson’s water isn’t near Flint-level horror, but you still don’t like to hear this:

Random water samples were taken in June 2015 from 58 homes in Jackson, 13 of which showed lead above “actionable levels of 0.015. The Mississippi State Department of Health notified the city of the findings last month. New samples were taken from the 58 sites and an additional 42 sites, city officials said. All but two of the resampled initial 13 sites had levels below the action level and some had no lead detection, authorities said. The final two locations where samples were taken are either vacant or using water from a private well, city officials said.

In the full set of 100 sites sampled in January, lab results show 11 are above the lead action level, city officials said.

So it’s been eight months since the first troubling samples were taken, and they just followed up starting last month. And they keep finding homes with “actionable” levels of lead, but the message to residents is not to worry? Unless of course you’re in a vulnerable population, in which case you should probably worry. What’s particularly scary is that it's not just Flint and Jackson: lead water pipes are very much a part of America’s troubled infrastructure. But since our national greatness doesn’t extend to fixing our infrastructure (especially not where poor people live), lead scares are something we’ll be living with for a while.