Unless the poison is immediately making you sick, and you can't afford to drink clean water, people don't get mad enough to riot.
Ape brains are really bad at holding other apes accountable for long-term, distributed harm inflicted on them.
Brown water coming out of the tap? You'll have marches in the streets. A slow poison that will, over five years of exposure drop the IQ of your children by 20 points? After four years of litigation hell and much hand-wringing, someone might finally get around to making your water mostly OK. [1]
> Unless the poison is immediately making you sick, and you can't afford to drink clean water, people don't get mad enough to riot.
Flint still has lead in the water. In Western societies riots have become really rare except France (which except for the Nordic states properly investing their oil money)... which coincides that they're the only remaining Western world with a halfway decent social security network. Macron tried to dismantle it and follow Germany and UK neoliberalism... had to roll back quite a bunch and people still want his head (some literally brought guillotines!).
French people actually can and dare to stand up for themselves. Their methods aren't exactly conventional, but they are effective.
Ape brains are really bad at holding other apes accountable for long-term, distributed harm inflicted on them.
Brown water coming out of the tap? You'll have marches in the streets. A slow poison that will, over five years of exposure drop the IQ of your children by 20 points? After four years of litigation hell and much hand-wringing, someone might finally get around to making your water mostly OK. [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#2018