December 23, 2016 zacherlaw 0 Comments

Michigan Attorney General, Bill Schuette, filed additional charges, including two against former state-appointed emergency managers, on Tuesday, December 20th in relation to the Flint water crisis. Darnell Earley and Gerald Ambrose were charged on Tuesday with multiple 20-year felonies as a result of their failure to protect Flint residents from health hazards caused by contaminated drinking water. Additional Flint city employees, Howard Croft and Daugherty Johnson, were charged alongside Earley and Ambrose with felony counts of false pretenses and conspiracy to commit false pretenses in the issuance of bonds to pay for a portion of the water project that led…

October 10, 2016 zacherlaw 0 Comments

Officials at the University of Michigan at Flint have announced that Legionella bacteria have been found in a residence hall on campus. No associated cases of Legionnaires’ disease have yet been reported. Three locations within the water supply of the Riverfront Residence Hall, a dormitory located on the banks of Flint River, have tested positive for Legionella. UM-Flint Chancellor Susan Borrego has stated that university officials are flushing the water system in the dorm and consulting health authorities. The CDC and the Genesee County Health Department have been notified and have confirmed that none of the 10 cases reported in Genesee County so…

September 26, 2016 zacherlaw 0 Comments

Lead researcher Dr. Jeffrey Griffiths of Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, who serves as a professor of public health and medicine, explained that his team analyzed 100 million Medicare records dated between 1991 and 2006. During that time, over 617,000 Americans had been hospitalized due to infection resulting from exposure to Legionella, which is responsible for Legionnaires’ disease; pseudomonas, which can develop into pneumonia; and mycobacteria, which can cause tuberculosis among other illnesses. These bacteria can live in pipes and survive on small amounts of nutrients found in water. Although most often water treatment plants are in place to help…

September 22, 2016 zacherlaw 0 Comments

Corinne Miller, former Director of Disease Control and Prevention within the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services  Corinne Miller, who retired earlier this year from her position as the Director of Disease Control and Prevention within the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, accepted a plea agreement last week regarding her involvement in the Flint water crisis. Miller plead no-contest to a misdemeanor charge of willful neglect of duty by a public officer, relinquishing two felony charges. Her misdemeanor charge may even be dismissed after her probation is completed. The plea acknowledges that Miller was aware of dozens of cases of…

September 8, 2016 zacherlaw 0 Comments

On Friday, September 2nd, special prosecutor Todd Flood and Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton stated that they expect additional criminal charges to be filed regarding the water crisis in Flint, MI. Back in 2014, officials of the Department of Environmental Quality allowed the city to change its water source to the Flint River without requiring the water to be treated to make it less corrosive. Between 2014 and 2015 at least twelve people died as a result of Legionnaires’ disease, an infection caused by Legionella bacteria found in water systems, suggesting a possible correlation between the change in the city’s water source and the Legionnaires’…

August 18, 2016 zacherlaw 0 Comments

Michigan’s Attorney General Bill Schuette has provided more information about an investigation into an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in Flint. The media storm surrounding cases of lead poisoning in the city at first overlooked Legionnaires’ disease, but recent probes have brought the outbreak to the public’s attention. Aging city infrastructure, combined with a water supply that may have been contaminated with Legionella bacteria, led to the outbreak that claimed at least 12 lives last year in the embattled city. The Attorney General’s office has been pursuing this investigation for two months. It has now announced that the investigation may lead…

July 29, 2016 zacherlaw 0 Comments

A new study by a team at Virginia Tech has linked the outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in Flint, MI to the city’s decision to switch its water supply. Flint suffered a surge in cases of Legionnaires’ disease from 2014 to 2015, with nearly 100 people sickened and 12 deaths. The death toll could have been higher, as Legionnaires’ disease often masquerades as pneumonia and goes unreported. Health officials assumed that the city’s decision to switch its water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River was to blame, but no tests were done at the time of the outbreak. (An…

July 11, 2016 zacherlaw 0 Comments

Public awareness of the problem of Legionnaires’ disease in Flint, Michigan may finally be paying off. A research project headed by Wayne State University in Michigan will investigate the possibility that water from the Flint River was contaminated with Legionella bacteria in addition to lead. After nearly 100 Flint residents contracted Legionnaires’ disease in 2014 and 2015, with 12 cases proving fatal, experts wondered whether the outbreak was related to the city’s water system. (By contrast, only one case of Legionnaires’ disease has been reported in the Flint area so far this year.) Little testing was done for Legionella, though, despite the…

July 7, 2016 zacherlaw 0 Comments

The first case of Legionnaires’ disease this year has been reported in the Flint, MI area. The news comes less than a week after county officials issued a statement saying that no new cases of Legionnaires’ disease had been reported in Flint’s county in 2016. In a statement released on June 30, the Genesee County Health Department stated that no residents of the area have contracted the disease in 2016. On July 6, however, officials from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services announced that a patient from the Genesee County area had been diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease. The…

July 1, 2016 zacherlaw 0 Comments

A recent investigation into a pneumonia death in Flint has demonstrated the need for hospitals to release Legionella test results and for diligent testing of patients at risk for Legionnaires’ disease. In a June 28 article for Bridge Magazine, Chastity Pratt Dawsey reports on the case of Bertie Marble. Mrs. Marble, a 68-year-old resident of Flint, Michigan, passed away in March 2015 after a spell of ill health. During her final stay at McLaren Regional Medical Center in Flint, Mrs. Marble was diagnosed with “healthcare-associated pneumonia”. McLaren had found Legionella bacteria in its water system in late 2014 but had not revealed…