US Babies on the Bottle

It seems that formula, bottle-fed babies, in many parts of the USA, have an additional problem to the hoards of micro and nano-plastics they will consume with their feed. The water, in around 80% of US homes, is said to contain detectable levels of lead (presumably from aging piping). It has long been established that this metal has a profound negative effect on the development of the nervous system in babies (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/20/led-exposure-bottle-fed-babies-black-infants-study). People have long worried about the levels of lead in the water supplies of Flint (Michigan) but the problem has not been solved here for all. New Orleans has 80% of its homes with detectable lead in the drinking water. One half of these have values that exceed the levels to which developing children should be exposed. Unsurprisingly, many of the locations with the highest lead values in tap water, are areas where people from poorer, ethnic minorities have to live. Of course, even if the babies in these locations are breast-fed, they will be picking up lead from the water that their mothers drink. It is decades since they stopped (on health grounds) using lead products as 'anti-knocking' agents in gasoline. It is remarkable that the same attention hasn't been directed to reducing lead in drinking water.