As he got older, he wouldn’t use public restrooms. The noise of the flushing was overbearing, so he’d just hold it until he couldn’t. He wanted his bathtub filled to a specific level before he’d get in. He demanded pancakes cut a certain way, and his parents kept extra syrup on hand because he always wanted the bottle full. When Jackson’s muggy heat gave way to fleeting winter, the boy struggled wearing pants instead of shorts.
It didn’t compute. Sarah Howard felt she’d done everything right during her pregnancy, she thought, even giving up her beloved coffee.
“I used to wonder if I did something wrong. Did I take the wrong vitamin or something?” she said.
But they just don’t know.
Seeking accountability
The legal team met with hundreds of parents this month at The Mississippi Children’s Museum. As their children practiced puppetry, raced boats on a miniature river, clambered about a jungle gym and spelled words on a Scrabble board the size of a living room, parents quizzed the attorneys about Jackson’s water crisis and the legal remedies to which they might be entitled.
“It’s not the kind of brain damage where if you walk down the street and you saw them, you’d say to yourself, ‘That kid is really damaged.’ It’s the kind of brain damage that you can’t see, you can’t touch,” the attorney said. “But it’s real. It’s there, and it happens to children because their brains are still being formed, unlike us.”
“It doesn’t mean they won’t, but the deck is stacked against them once the lead gets into their body,” Stern said, “because it gets into their brain and it’s irreversible.”
At the museum, according to the legal team, parents of about 125 children sought to add their names to the lengthy roll of plaintiffs filing lawsuits alleging, among other things, city and state leaders knew of rising lead levels in Jackson’s drinking water sources for about two years before warning residents in January 2016. Lawsuits have been filed on behalf of almost half of the clients, roughly 2,000 and counting, and the rest are in the process, the legal team says.
The lawyers still await blood tests, and in some cases bone scans, from most of their child plaintiffs to determine if they’ve been poisoned.
In the meantime, Jackson parents just don’t know.
Lead exposure, of course, can come from sources other than water — paint, toys and soil, among them — but the lawsuit originally filed last year alleges lead has been a persistent hazard for anyone consuming city water and cites testing indicating worrisome levels of lead in Jackson’s water sources going back to late 2009, before many of the plaintiffs were born.
The city and state Department of Health have claimed the lawsuits — which also allege officials neglected to repair the water system — are without merit. The Health Department, which has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, declined to comment. Jackson’s city attorney referred CNN to court filings in which the city denied the substantive allegations.
Water woes just part of life
The state received test results for fewer than one in five children under 6 from 2010 to 2015, determining fewer than 1% had elevated blood lead levels, defined as more than 5 micrograms per deciliter of blood. The federal definition pegs it at 3.5 micrograms, and experts warn levels below 5 micrograms can still cause health issues.
So, parents across Mississippi just don’t know.
Kitty Blanks, a 42-year-old mother of four, stopped using the water for cooking years ago, but she still uses it for baths. It might be why her oldest daughter, 17, keeps breaking out. Lead in the water might also explain why her 12-year-old son was held back a grade, requiring home-schooling.
But she just doesn’t know.
“We’re still using it,” she said, walking through the museum parking lot. “Me and my kids are living through it.”
Lifelong resident Angel Allen, 24, always thought her tap water tasted bitter, “like something’s in it,” she said. After learning about the problems with lead, she wonders if it might explain why her son and daughter “can’t stay still for too long,” she said.
As children squealed and giggled in the museum’s jungle gym, her aunt, Jessica Allen, 34, added, “We’ve been exposed to the water over numerous years. Who knows how long it’s been like that?”
They just don’t know.
The same goes for Madonna Burkes, 38. Her family has dealt with spells of brown, rusty-looking water coming from the pipes for more than a decade, she said. Her 12-year-old daughter suffers from a rare skin disorder, she said, and the medicine she’s prescribed can cause liver damage.
“I don’t feel safe taking a bath, drinking water, playing in the water,” the youngster told CNN.
The night before the museum meeting, Rylo, the family’s 5-year-old pit bull terrier, died after a bout with illness. He was healthy and had all his shots, Burkes’ fiancé, Marlon Blackmon, said, but Rylo loved to play in water and drank tap water his whole life. Last year, Rylo’s mother died of an unexplained cyst, he said.
“How do we know it don’t come from the water?” Burkes asked of the problems in her household.
They just don’t know.
Jamil Woodruff, 34, went to the museum in hopes it might explain issues with three of her five children. Her oldest child, 11, has memory problems and struggles to focus. She was recently diagnosed with ADHD. Her 5-year-old twins are developmentally behind and require special education.
Woodruff, who has lived in Jackson since she was 15, has a scalp condition which seems to worsen when she bathes at home, so she drives 20 minutes to her mother’s house in Pearl to shower, she said.
Like many of the hundreds of parents in attendance, she only recently learned of the history of lead in Jackson’s water. She hopes blood tests on her and her children might yield some answers.
But as of now, she just doesn’t know.
Residents blame a parade of city and state politicians who they say never cared enough to address the situation. They’d rather squabble across party lines than help the people of Jackson, in many residents’ eyes.
“You want to give millions to a football player … but you’re not taking care of the kids,” Wilson said. “Our kids are suffering. It’s an embarrassment for the capital city.”
Inequity compounds problems
Andrew and Sarah Howard eventually placed their son in therapy after he was diagnosed with sensory processing disorder at age 4. Later, they learned he also has attention deficit disorder. It was easier to make a connection when their second child began showing some of the same tendencies, particularly with noises and smells.
They’ve stopped blaming themselves. They still feel overwhelmed at times. Their daughter recently became upset, covering her ears in the car when a Weeknd song came through the speakers.
“I just got the worst feeling inside my head,” the 10-year-old said. “The sound of the bass was making my eardrums rumble.”
The Howards have techniques and coping mechanisms — noise-canceling headphones for restaurants, for instance — to help their son, now 15, and daughter through their days.
“It’s so uneven,” Sarah said.
Where he has spent years researching his children’s conditions and the state of the water in his hometown, Andrew wonders how many people — in a city where the average annual income per person is around $23,000 — have the wherewithal let alone the time and resources to scrutinize such matters, he said.
“That’s infuriating,” he said. “What about the people who don’t know to ask these questions?”
Friends and family have long asked the Howards why they stay in Jackson, and the answer is simple: They love it here. This latest crisis marks the first time in 16 years the couple has questioned their convictions, Sarah Howard said.
The same goes for many in Jackson. There’s still so much they just don’t know.
Stern, the attorney, hears a lot from less-than-proud Jacksonians, residents who are ashamed to be likened to Flint and far-flung developing countries, people who don’t have an answer when friends and family outside Jackson ask why they didn’t speak up sooner.
“People here feel like the country is watching them for the first time ever, and they haven’t advocated for themselves in such a meaningful way over the last few years partially because they didn’t know what was happening in their pipes,” he said.
Jackson, like Flint and other cities where his firm has taken on cases involving lead in the water, has a chance to send a message to cities across the nation, Stern said.
It’s past time, the attorney said, that people know.