04/16/2026
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Dr. Mona Hanna was born on December 9, 1976, in Sheffield, England. Her parents were Iraqi scientists who fled Saddam Hussein's brutal regime in the 1970s. They were dissidents and activists who fought against oppression. They moved to England first and then immigrated to the United States when Mona was young.
The family settled in Royal Oak, Michigan. Mona's mother taught English to other immigrants and her father was a metallurgical engineer who worked for General Motors. She grew up in a household where science, justice, and activism were core values. Her parents had risked everything to fight tyranny and they taught their children to speak truth to power.
Mona graduated from Kimball High School and went on to earn her Bachelor of Science from the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability. She got her Master of Public Health degree in Health Management and Policy from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She earned her medical degree from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. She completed her residency and chief residency at Wayne State University and Children's Hospital of Michigan.
In 2011, she returned to Flint as a pediatrician at Hurley Medical Center. Flint was already a struggling city that had been suffering from decades of economic decline after General Motors left. The city was near bankruptcy and the population had dropped dramatically. More than two-thirds of children lived in poverty. It was a city that had been abandoned and forgotten.
On April 25, 2014, Flint made a decision to save money. The city switched its water source from Lake Huron, which was provided by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, to the Flint River. The switch was supposed to be temporary while the city built its own pipeline. But it was a cost-cutting measure driven by emergency managers appointed by the state.
The critical mistake was that they didn't add corrosion control treatment to the water. Corrosion control chemicals prevent lead from leaching out of old pipes and plumbing into the water supply. Without it, the Flint River water, which was 19 times more corrosive than the Detroit water, started eating away at the pipes. Lead began poisoning the water supply of approximately 100,000 residents.
Almost immediately, residents started complaining. The water came out greenish and brownish. It smelled weird and tasted terrible. People were getting rashes all over their bodies. They were losing their hair. Children were breaking out in rashes up to the water line when they took baths. Parents were terrified and asked Dr. Mona if it was safe to use tap water to mix their baby's formula.
Dr. Mona told them it was fine because that's what the state and city officials were saying. For a year and a half, she reassured her patients that everything was okay. She trusted the government and she couldn't imagine that their drinking water wouldn't be safe. How could that happen in America? But she was wrong and the guilt would haunt her later.
In January 2015, testing by the University of Michigan-Flint revealed elevated lead levels in the water. But nothing was done about it. In 2014 and 2015, two outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease coincided with the water source switch. The disease causes pneumonia and can be fatal. At least 12 people died and 79 people became ill. Researchers eventually linked 80% of the Legionnaires' cases to a decline in chlorine levels in the water system due to iron corrosion.
In August 2015, Dr. Mona was having a glass of wine in her kitchen with two friends. One of them was Elin Betzano, her high school friend who happened to be a water expert for the EPA. Elin asked if Mona was aware of what was happening to the water in Flint. Elin told her, "Mona, the water isn't being treated properly. It's missing something called corrosion control. Without that corrosion control, there is going to be lead."
Dr. Mona felt her stomach drop. Lead is a neurotoxin that damages children's brains and nervous systems. It causes slow growth and development and results in learning problems, behavioral issues, hearing loss, and speech problems. There is no safe level of lead for human consumption and no antidote once it's in the body. The effects are especially damaging and irreversible for children whose brains are still developing.
She realized that she had been telling her patients for over a year that the water was safe when it wasn't. She had failed them. The guilt was overwhelming but she channeled it into action. She immediately started investigating.
In September 2015, Marc Edwards, an environmental engineer from Virginia Tech, released a study. He had been working with citizen scientists and testing residential water samples throughout Flint. They found that 40% of homes had elevated lead levels. One sample collected after 45 seconds of flushing showed lead levels greater than 1,000 parts per billion, which is almost 70 times the EPA drinking water action level. He recommended that the state declare Flint water unsafe for drinking or cooking.
Dr. Mona launched her own study using Hurley Medical Center's electronic medical records. She analyzed the blood lead levels of Flint children under 5 years old before and after the April 2014 water switch. She worked around the clock gathering data and crunching numbers. What she found was devastating.
The percentage of children with elevated blood lead levels had increased by 50% after the water switch. In some high-risk neighborhoods, the percentage had nearly tripled. Over 8,000 children had been irreparably poisoned with lead. Their brains had been damaged. Their futures had been stolen. And it was all preventable.
Dr. Mona knew she needed to act urgently. Typically, research goes through a long peer-review process before being published. But children were being poisoned every single day and she couldn't wait. On September 24, 2015, she held a press conference and released her study to the public. She stated clearly, "This research is concerning. These results are concerning."
The state government immediately went on the attack. Instead of addressing the crisis, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality tried to discredit her. They called her an "unfortunate researcher." They accused her of "splicing and dicing numbers" and "causing near-hysteria." They labeled Marc Edwards a "troublemaker." State officials insisted that their tests at Flint's treatment plant showed no lead problems and the water was safe.
Dr. Mona was devastated by the attacks. She said, "It's very difficult when you are presenting science and facts and numbers to have the state say that you are wrong." But she refused to back down. She had her family's history of activism in her blood. She knew what it meant to speak truth to power even when power tries to destroy you.
She testified twice in court against the state of Michigan. She gave interviews to every media outlet that would listen. She made sure the national press covered the story. She worked hand in hand with community activists and residents who had been sounding the alarm for over a year. Together, they refused to let the government silence them.
Documents later revealed through Freedom of Information Act requests showed that the state Health Department had actually analyzed blood lead levels in the summer of 2015. They had seen a spike in children's blood lead levels but didn't share that information with the public. It was another missed opportunity where the crisis could have been averted. They knew children were being poisoned and they covered it up.
The pressure mounted. The media coverage intensified. The evidence was overwhelming. On October 15, 2015, the Michigan State Legislature approved $9.3 million to switch Flint's water source back to the Detroit Water and Sewerage System. The next day, on October 16, the switch was made. But the damage was already done.
On January 16, 2016, city, state, and federal officials declared a state of emergency in the city of Flint and Genesee County. This opened the door to state and federal funding to replace lead pipes and provide health services for the long-term effects of lead poisoning. Eventually, the EPA granted Flint $100 million and the state allocated $250 million to address the crisis.
Over 15 criminal charges were filed against state and city officials. Former Michigan Department of Health and Human Services head Nick Lyon faced manslaughter charges for failing to alert the public to the risk of Legionnaires' disease. Multiple officials were indicted for their roles in the cover-up.
In 2016, Time Magazine named Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha one of the Most Influential People in the world. She won the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling. She was included in the Politico 50. She became a household name and a symbol of scientific integrity and moral courage.
In 2018, she published her memoir called "What the Eyes Don't See." The title was inspired by a line from D.H. Lawrence: "What the eye doesn't see and the mind doesn't know, doesn't exist." The New York Times named it one of the 100 most notable books of the year. She wrote, "This is a story of resistance, of activism, of citizen action, of waking up and opening your eyes and making a difference in our community."
But Dr. Mona didn't stop with writing a book. She became the founding director of the Pediatric Public Health Initiative at Michigan State University. She is now Associate Dean and Professor of Public Health at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. She is an international champion for safe water and a fierce spokesperson for impoverished children.
She has testified before the United States Congress numerous times, calling urgently for federal action to replace lead pipes across the country. Her advocacy has borne fruit. Recently, the EPA proposed revisions to 30-year-old regulations regarding lead in water. The new rules call for replacing lead service lines in most water systems within a decade, enhanced lead testing requirements, and lowering the action level for lead from 15 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion.
She has put into place multiple interventions in Flint to promote children's brain development and limit the impact of the crisis. She can't prescribe a magic pill to take away lead poisoning because there is no antidote. But she can do a lot to mitigate the damage through nutrition, education, and poverty reduction.
One of her programs is called Rx Kids. It gives new moms in Flint a no-strings-attached check of $7,500. The goal is to boldly eradicate infant poverty. She says, "The most potent medication that we can prescribe is to lift our families out of poverty." In a city that so many people know as a city that failed kids, Flint is now learning and leading with science and prevention.
Ten years later, the scars of betrayal still linger in Flint. The fallout from the water crisis persists. Justice remains elusive despite over a dozen lawsuits. But Dr. Mona continues to fight. She refuses to be okay with poisoned water and she refuses to be okay with babies growing up in poverty.
She has said, "The Flint story is about deeper national crises: environmental justice issues, disrespect for science, deteriorating infrastructure, and how we fundamentally care for one another." Since Flint, communities across America have awakened to the reality that their tap water might not be safe. Cities like Chicago and Baltimore have discovered their own lead problems. Schools across the country have tested their water and found contamination.
The Flint water crisis exposed systemic failures at every level of government. It showed how environmental racism works—poor Black communities are treated as disposable and their lives matter less than saving money. It demonstrated how officials will lie, cover up, and attack whistleblowers to protect their own careers and reputations.
But it also showed the power of science, the courage of citizen activism, and the importance of speaking truth to power. Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha could have stayed silent. She could have trusted the government when they said she was wrong. But she didn't. She fought for the children of Flint and she won.
~Weird but True
