An Ongoing Environmental Disaster in Flint, Michigan: Narratives of Inequality through the Lens of Older Adults

Background and Purpose

During the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan, concerns of environmental justice continue to resonate with older residents.  Across the life course, exposure to drinking water contaminants can differently impact physical, mental, and social well-being. Challenges that older adults may confront, such as social isolation, frailty, and comorbidities (e.g., mobility impairments, COPD, dementia/Alzheimer's disease), may exacerbate the harmful effects of lead exposure in late life. Moreover, lead exposure in late life may be one among many environmental and social harms that cumulatively affect older adults.

These residents continue to voice their concerns about access to filtered and bottled water, access to information, reflections on city and statewide current and former leadership, including a series of indictments. Many times, lived experiences intersect with clear questions about racial and economic inequality including whether this crisis would have happened at all if the City of Flint’s poverty rate of almost forty percent and demographic make-up were different.  This case study looks at the effects of inequity in the creation of the crisis as well as solutions for its older residents. 

Methods

This paper will draw on data from an ongoing ethnographic study of older adult Flint residents that investigates their understanding and perceptions of the relationship between the water crisis and their health and wellbeing in this nationally recognized water crisis. Our sample consists of African American and white Flint residents of lower socioeconomic status, aged 50 and over. This paper draws upon interviews and participant observation with older adults residing in apartments and homes (n=15), senior living environments (n=15) and staff working in senior living environments (n=6) in Flint to address the effect of the crisis on older adults living in congregate housing settings. The presentation will also provide examples of the photo elicitation component of project with photos taken by older adults and staff members.

Results

We examine how these narratives illustrate varying scales of place. On an individual scale, older adults’ stated concerns of health and wellbeing also index their relationships to their residential spaces. Moreover, on a larger scale, narratives of relationships to one’s community, including neighborhoods and congregate living environment, reveal that belonging emerges as a phenomenon that is nested within different spaces. Within these narratives, concerns of environmental justice appear. 

Implications

These findings are applicable to social work practitioners and policy makers working with older adults in environmental crises and/or crises involving individual and community level trauma.  These findings also suggest a need for age-inclusive and tailored to age-specific needs in environmental justice scenarios.