Before Flint, East Chicago and Newark, there was Smeltertown.

https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/flint-east-chicago-there-was-smeltertown?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=story2&utm_campaign=email

Seminal research done on Smeltertown in the 1970s by the Centers for Disease Control found that 62 percent of children 10 and under living within one mile of the smelter had blood lead levels considered to be “evidence of undue lead absorption.” The residents of Smeltertown would be the first American community to face the grim prospect of lead exposure and its consequences—but they wouldn’t be the last. The communities of Flint, Michigan, the West Calumet Housing Complex in East Chicago, Indiana, and the schools in Newark, New Jersey, are just three of the most recent examples.