The triggering event was very clearly the use of Flint River water without any corrosion control, had the corrosion control been in the water, disinfectant would have been higher, iron would have been lower, probably the outbreak would not have occurred.

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If we don't fix this problem, a whole lot of people get hurt when they're being told there's nothing to worry about, and I can't live in a world where that's allowed to happen. ... The reality is, yeah we're third-world when it comes to drinking water in these poorer communities. That's the reality.

There's never a ribbon cutting ceremony when you fix an underground, dirty water pipe, and that's why we typically invest more in bridges and airports and other things that can be a showcase, but the danger from these pipes is real.

What we discovered was that when the Flint River water went into the system it released a lot of iron, and removed the disinfectant from the water, and in combination, those two factors, the iron as a nutrient and the disinfectant disappearing, allowed legionella to thrive in buildings where it could not do so previously.

It's difficult to do that -- because you're trying to go back in time. whether anyone does that or not, remains to be seen, what our experiment is going to do is show why the Flint river water was growing more legionella. This is the only way you can do that testing becuase that water doesn't exist anymore, we had to recreate it.

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