This is appalling and entirely predictable........
A new study associates the lead-poisoned water in Flint, Michigan, with a “horrifyingly large” increase in fetal deaths and miscarriages, after the city changed its public water supply in 2014. The Washington Post reports:
During this time period, residents in Flint were generally unaware of the amount of lead in their water. “Because the higher lead content of the new water supply was unknown at the time, this decrease in [the general fertility rate] is likely a reflection of an increase in fetal deaths and miscarriages and not a behavior change in sexual behavior related to conception like contraceptive use,” Grossman and Slusky conclude.
They next turned to deaths of fetuses of 20 weeks gestation and older, excluding abortions, which are reported by hospitals. ... The change in Flint amounted to a 58 percent increase in fetal deaths, relative to areas not afflicted by lead-poisoned water, a change the authors characterized as “horrifyingly large.”