It's a fine enough doc. Nothing special. The Flint crisis to me is very interesting because you see how enormously the public sector can screw up simple jobs and then also because it's interesting to hear about water pollution and how to measure it.
Unfortunately this documentary is not about the evidence but rather about the emotional outbursts from Flint citizens and outsiders. Often a pollution level would be explained in the doc by "And I couldn't work for a period of time because I got sick." That's not really proving anything. People constantly get sick or just don't turn up for work because they overslept. This sort of anecdotal evidence is often just misperceptions. After Chernobyl by far the biggest problem is people thinking the pollution is worse than it is. You can actually live in the Chernobyl area without any repercussions if you just avoid drinking goat milk and eating certain fruits from the trees. People don't know that they think just being there is dangerous which has caused mass panic that's destructive to whole families.
What we have of evidence here is shaky at best. Some regular wife without any expertise tested only her water and nothing else. Some single random researcher decided to test this stuff without any big team behind him. Some college students paid with pizza did some tests that frankly felt amatourish and subjective as they talked about them. Some ideological researcher made it her life mission to find any type of pollution level in any type of patient. I know the government really screwed the pooch here, but unfortunately the documentary rather makes it seem like ideological and irrational people made a big case out of very little. Where are the professional measures and opinions? Where are the comparisons to other Michigan towns? The truth is that it's very hard to find any water pollution in Flint on the level that would cause any long-lasting effects let alone effects you can see day to day as the people talk mention. That doesn't mean it's not there. It's just that we need to know exactly how bad it is and this doc doesn't tell us that. Who got fined or imprisoned? The doc doesn't tell us that. We just know something is happening and some people are angry.
Unfortunately this documentary is not about the evidence but rather about the emotional outbursts from Flint citizens and outsiders. Often a pollution level would be explained in the doc by "And I couldn't work for a period of time because I got sick." That's not really proving anything. People constantly get sick or just don't turn up for work because they overslept. This sort of anecdotal evidence is often just misperceptions. After Chernobyl by far the biggest problem is people thinking the pollution is worse than it is. You can actually live in the Chernobyl area without any repercussions if you just avoid drinking goat milk and eating certain fruits from the trees. People don't know that they think just being there is dangerous which has caused mass panic that's destructive to whole families.
What we have of evidence here is shaky at best. Some regular wife without any expertise tested only her water and nothing else. Some single random researcher decided to test this stuff without any big team behind him. Some college students paid with pizza did some tests that frankly felt amatourish and subjective as they talked about them. Some ideological researcher made it her life mission to find any type of pollution level in any type of patient. I know the government really screwed the pooch here, but unfortunately the documentary rather makes it seem like ideological and irrational people made a big case out of very little. Where are the professional measures and opinions? Where are the comparisons to other Michigan towns? The truth is that it's very hard to find any water pollution in Flint on the level that would cause any long-lasting effects let alone effects you can see day to day as the people talk mention. That doesn't mean it's not there. It's just that we need to know exactly how bad it is and this doc doesn't tell us that. Who got fined or imprisoned? The doc doesn't tell us that. We just know something is happening and some people are angry.