“Toxic” is a word that can easily send a shiver down someone’s spine, and when that word is accompanied by something as crucial to life as “water,” there is need for concern.

The Flint River has been proven to be unsafe to drink. The actual current protocol is that the water is “safe for bathing, but not for drinking.” Virginia Tech students took samples from the river to test the toxicity to see if the current theory holds water.

The Washington Post article, “This is how toxic Flint’s water really is”  blasts these findings out of the water. A group of Virginia Tech researchers, “sampled the water in 271 Flint homes last summer [and] found some contained lead levels high enough to meet the EPA’s definition of ‘toxic waste.’”

If water is at 5 parts per billion, there is a cause for concern. Some readings from their findings are:

Troy, Michigan’s water is measured at 1.1 lead parts per billion.

Detroit, Michigan’s water is measures at 2.3 lead parts per billion.

Flint, Michigan’s water is measures at 27 lead parts per billion in an average home. This is more than five times the amount of concern.

It doesn’t stop there! The highest level the VA Tech students found in the sample was 158 parts per billion!

There is even more…

The highest level ever found in the Flint water supply was an extreme 13,000 parts per billion. Whoa! If 5 parts per billion is concerning, imagine 13,000 parts per billion.

It’s astounding, that’s for sure. The professor who conducted the sampling, Dr. Marc Edwards, was in “disbelief.” He said, “We had never seen such sustained high levels of lead in 25 years of work.”

What’s even more shocking is that this crisis has been going on for 4 YEARS without much government action.