I had a great idea for a follow-up to Carrie Fisher’s funny stage show and memoir, Wishful Drinking, called Lethal Drinking. But alas, Carrie’s gone. And my stories aren’t very funny. And they don’t involve Trumpworld, which has sucked all the oxygen out of the room for awhile. So a PopTort will have to do.
Yesterday, the mayor of Flint Michigan said the city will sue the state now that Gov. Rick Snyder has decided “to stop the state's funding of bottled water to residents of Flint,” saying the city needs to "get over it." Said Mayor Karen Weaver,
"It's an issue of public health, it's an ethical and moral issue. We don't have all of the lead lines replaced. They gave us their word that they would see us through this lead and galvanized service replacements and that we would have the PODS open until then. He's done a disservice to this community by backing off from their word."…
Weaver said the state needs to remember "they're the ones that did this to the community, we didn't do this to ourselves. They had the heavy hand. To not want to have this conversation is a total disrespect to the people of Flint."
Just to remind PopTort readers of what this crisis is all about,
In April 2014, in an effort to save money, Flint Michigan’s unelected emergency manager (appointed by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder) switched the city’s water source to the polluted Flint River. The drinking water immediately started sickening its largely poor- African American residents, including poisoning 27,000 children with lead, which causes permanent brain damage. And to make matters even worse, many now believe the contaminated water source is also responsible for the recent outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease which has sickened at least 87 people and killed nine. State officials, with full knowledge of what was happening, refused to do anything as the community got sicker and sicker.
The state is now saying that “Flint’s water is testing the same as or better than similar cities across the state.” That's some standard. Next thing we know, the state’s tourism slogan will switch to “Come to Michigan where our brain-damaging drinking water is better than yours.” (That means you Chicagoans!)
Meanwhile, if all this is making you wanna drink something a little stronger – don’t. Mother Jones’ Stephanie Mencimer wrote last week about a "huge study spearheaded by the UK’s University of Cambridge published in The Lancet," which "included dozens of researchers from around the world and nearly 600,000 drinkers in 19 countries" and found "that the people who consume more than one drink a day face greater risks of dying from any cause than those who drink less."
And please check out her other piece published in the magazine’s May/June issue, called “Did Drinking Give me Breast Cancer?” Bet you didn’t know that:
…way back in 1988, the World Health Organization declared alcohol a Group 1 carcinogen, meaning that it’s been proved to cause cancer. There is no known safe dosage in humans, according to the WHO. Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer, but it kills more women from breast cancer than from any other. The International Agency for Research on Cancer estimates that for every drink consumed daily, the risk of breast cancer goes up 7 percent.
The research linking alcohol to breast cancer is deadly solid. There’s no controversy here. Alcohol, regardless of whether it’s in Everclear or a vintage Bordeaux, is carcinogenic. More than 100 studies over several decades have reaffirmed the link with consistent results. The National Cancer Institute says alcohol raises breast cancer risk even at low levels.
Mencimer’s article says, “The science on the link is clear, but the alcohol industry has worked hard to downplay it.” Gee what a shock.
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