This article was written by Quintessa Williams for Word In Black.
Dionna Brown was two weeks shy of her 15th birthday when her world turned upside-down. An outstanding public high school student in Flint, Michigan, with a report card most of her peers would envy, she suddenly began to struggle in the classroom for no obvious reason.
“I was in AP and honors classes — a straight-A student,” she recalls. “Then all of a sudden, I couldn’t remember things. I couldn’t concentrate.”
Rushed to the hospital, doctors pinpointed the problem: tests revealed elevated levels of lead, a potent neurotoxin, in Brown’s blood. In high enough concentrations, lead can cause permanent brain damage, lower IQ, learning disabilities — and even death…