What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City

Alice Hamilton is one of Dr. Mona’s favorite social justice activists and medical doctors. Dr. Mona describes her as “a stubborn badass who devoted her life to improving the lives of workers, the poor, and the children” (149). During particularly stressful periods of the Flint water crisis, Dr. Mona would think about how hard Hamilton worked to try and right the wrong of adding TEL to gasoline and make the world a better and safer place for kids.

Kettering was an engineer and inventor who headed GM’s research department from 1920-1947. His inventions, which included the electric starter, were instrumental in the automobile’s evolution. Because he was the primary driving force behind the introduction of tetra-ethyl lead (TEL) as a gasoline additive, Dr. Mona considers him to be the number one health enemy. Despite knowing the dangers of TEL, he still pushed for its public use. Leaded gasoline poisoned the environment and human bodies.

Elin Betanzo is Dr. Mona’s high school friend. She is an environmental scientist with over 15 years of experience, including working for the Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water. She played a critical role in exposing the Flint water crisis by encouraging Dr. Mona (which started at a family barbeque) to conduct a study that discovered elevated blood-lead levels in Flint children. 

Governor Ricky Snyder, a republican, served as the 48th governor of Michigan from 2011-2019. As part of his cost-cutting initiatives for Flint, he stripped the democratically elected mayor of all political power and imposed a governor-appointed, unelected emergency manager. It was one of his appointed emergency managers who made the decision to temporarily switch to the Flint river for the city’s water supply

Haji is Dr. Mona’s maternal grandfather, and he had a profound impact on her worldviews. He taught Dr. Mona to treat everybody with respect and to stand up for injustices even in the face of great challenges. She credits him with being her guiding principle throughout her life, including through the Flint water crisis.

Jenny LaChance was a research coordinator at Hurley clinic. Dr. Mona had known Jenny prior to the blood-lead data project. According to Dr. Mona, Jenny was “smart, logistical, superscientific, and verging on obsessive, she loves nothing more than designing a foolproof study and figuring out the best way to collect and analyze data” (136). Jenny worked with Dr. Mona to make sure the study was robust and airtight. 

Dayne Walling was mayor of Flint from 2009 to 2015. He pushed the button on April 25, 2014 that shut off the city’s connection to Detroit’s water system and switched it to the Flint River. Dr. Mona and her colleagues tried to get Mayor Walling to declare a city emergency which would alert Flint residents to stop drinking the water. Instead, Mayor Walling, a native of Flint, chose to side with other city and state officials and say that Flint’s water was safe for drinking. He was one of the many political casualties of the Flint water crisis, losing his reelection bid to Karen Weaver. 

Marc Edwards, a civil engineer and University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, has played a vital role in ensuring the safety of drinking water and in exposing America’s failing water-delivery infrastructure. His research helped to confirm that lead was poisoning DC and Flint’s water. He also provided scientific expertise to Dr. Mona’s study. He won a MacArthur Fellowship genius grant in 2007 and was among Time’s 100 most influential people, Fortune’s 50 greatest leaders, Politico’s top 50 visionaries, and Foreign Policy’s 100 greatest thinkers in 2016.

Miguel Del Toral worked at the EPA’s Chicago office and was Elin’s former colleague. His report, which he helped leak to the public, is the first documented example of a government official publicly raising red flags about lead in Flint’s water. Rather than the EPA conducting further investigations into his findings, they publicly discredited his results.