If you lived in Jackson, Mississippi in late 2021, you remember going for nearly a month without tap water. Cold weather made many of the city’s aging pipes burst. The result was 150,000 people with empty faucets. In 2022 a flood and broken water pumps made the water in every Jackson kitchen so dangerous from lead and other contaminants that government agencies told everyone to boil it before drinking. While the Environmental Protection Agency investigated, many families there relied on bottled water for drinking, cooking, and brushing their teeth. The polluted water’s long-term impact on the children of women who were pregnant during those years may never be fully understood.

A 2014 lead contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan left 100,000 people without drinkable tap water, in some cases for more than 18 months. More than 6,000 children drank it before — and in some cases after — government agencies at every level sounded the alarm. While Flint’s crisis was the most high-profile water emergency in the last decade, the Michigan town of Benton Harbor had it worse in 2021. Americans in the lakeside community reported tea-colored water pouring from their faucets and “sizzling like Alka-Seltzer.” Flint’s water contamination averaged 20 parts per billion of lead. Benton Harbor’s was as high as 889 parts per billion.