'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 24, 2010 2:26 pm

The Gulf Crisis is Not Over

Slow Violence and the BP Coverups

By ANNE McCLINTOCK

Three vanishing acts are being played out in the Gulf: the disappearing of the oil from the ocean surface by Corexit, the disappearing of the story by the media blockade, and the disappearing from view of the shadowy private contractors who are making a mint helping BP and the Coast Guard keep a cover on the clean-up. This triple vanishing trick, collectively choreographed by BP and sundry federal agencies, culminated on August 4th in a report released by NOAA that claimed 75% of the oil spill had been captured, burned, evaporated or broken down. The White House hailed the report as something to celebrate. Energy advisor Carol Browne announced: “the vast majority of the oil is gone.”

A clamor of outrage immediately rose from the Gulf, as residents refused to dance the crisis-is-over, happy-feet dance. Hundreds of locals furiously insisted that they were still seeing masses of oil on ocean, beaches and marshes, and dead fish, dolphins, sharks, birds and other marine life washing ashore. Then on August 18th scientists from the Universities of Georgia and South Florida produced an open challenge to the White House report, asserting that 70% to 79% of the oil in the Gulf still remained in the water. Charles Hopkinson, a professor of marine science at the University of Georgia declared: “The idea that 75% of the oil is gone and of no concern to the environment is just absolutely incorrect.”

Spike Lee, filming in the Gulf, scoffed at what he called the BP/White House “abracabra kawabanga” trick and called on journalists to stay with the story. A few weeks earlier, the triple vanishing act had come together personally for me in a story that Steve, a private contractor, told in the shadows of a southern Louisiana bar. I call the contractor Steve, though that is not his real name. I cannot tell you his real name because he has assured me that he will kill me if I do. I had been in the Gulf for three days with Karin Hayes, a film-maker, documenting the oil-spill when Steve approached us in the bar, urgently wanting to tell us something.

“It’s as if a nuclear apocalypse has gone off in the Gulf,” he said. “The media is not telling the truth. No one is telling the truth. Let me tell you something. Yesterday on the beach where we work, my crew cleaned up seven hundred bags of oil. Today we went back and the beach was completely covered in oil, as if we had never been there. Today we carried away another seven hundred and fifty bags. Every day we clean up, then the tide brings it in again. The oil is everywhere, deep under the sand. Today I wanted to measure the oil, so I stuck my shovel into the sand and the oil was down there eight inches deep.”

Steve leaned in close, “Do you want to know how long my contract is to work down here?” he asked. “Three years.” His jaw muscles tightened as if he wanted to suck his words back into his mouth, but could not. “They are telling everyone it is not so bad, but clean-up will take many years. I am going to be here a long time.” Steve wiped a hand heavily over his eyes as if they were burning. “Let me tell you something. Today we saw three sharks washed up dead on the beach. The insides of their noses were black with oil. The membranes of their mouths were black with oil. Their eyes were black with oil.”

Steve is a war veteran who has seen a great deal of horror, but he seems to find this memory inordinately upsetting. “I am telling you this for the sake of our grandchildren,” he said. “We have an apocalypse going on and no one is paying enough attention.”



The CTEH Cover Up

A few days later, Steve and I were talking in the chemical-laced dusk of a car park. The Louisiana night was a strange brew of oily vapors and ginger blossom. Steve was slumped against his car, exhausted by his fifteen-hour day. The red tip of his cigarette burned on-off in the dark like a warning signal. As we talked, the nightly, muffled thrup-thrup of distant helicopters began. A number of people had told me about these strange, night flights, as helicopters and planes headed out on mysterious missions. I asked Steve where they were going.

“They are looking for oil,” he said. “The helicopters go out first at dusk. When they spot oil, they radio the gps locations back to the Coast Guard. Then between one and three in the morning, the planes go out and spray the oil with dispersants.”

“Why do they go out at night?” I ask. “They are hiding the oil with dispersants, Steve said. “They don’t want people to know how much oil there is out there. And they don’t want people to know how much dispersants they are spraying. It’s one of the big secrets down here.”

As it happens, Steve knows a good deal about dispersants. Before coming to work on the oil spill, he worked as a contractor for Halliburton; he now works in the Gulf for a company dealing with environmental toxicity and health hazards. It took a couple of hours talking and half a bottle of Southern Comfort before Steve revealed the name of his company. “I work for CTEH,” he said. Then he dragged his hand hard over his eyes. “I can’t believe I just told you that,” he said, but it was clear he wanted to.

Founded in 1997 in Arkansas, CTEH (Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health) specializes in toxicology and risk assessment. According to its website, CTEH “specializes in the specific expertise of toxicology, risk assessment, industrial hygiene, occupational health, and response to emergencies or other events involving release or threat of release of chemicals.” As it happens, CTEH is the company down in the Gulf that is quietly monitoring the levels of chemical toxicity of the oil-spill and its possible impact on the health of offshore workers involved in the clean-up.

CTEH is part of the Joint Unified Command based in Houma, Louisiana, where BP shares its office with the Coast Guard. The CTEH website is frank: CTEH is “proud” of its role in the Unified Command response. The website is less frank, however, about one stunningly important omission. CTEH is being paid by BP.

CTEH, in other word, is monitoring the possible toxic effects on workers of the chemicals BP has unleashed, and it is doing this at BP’s expense. In short, CTEH is being paid by BP to check up on BP. This is a conflict of interest so flagrant it is like a murder suspect hiring the forensic experts who will examine the murder scene.

CTEH has, to boot, an impressively consistent record of unsavory conflict of interest cases, where they have ruled favorably every time on behalf of their corporate clients. CTEH was hired by a coal company after it unleashed a massive coal-ash spill in the Tennessee Valley. CTEH declared everything hunky-dory. CTEH was hired by a paper mill sued by an employee for asbestos exposure. CTEH blamed the employee’s health problems on his lifestyle. Murphy Oil Refinery hired CTEH after spilling one million gallons into a community in St Bernard’s parish, LA. CTEH found nothing there for anyone to worry about.

Now, down in the Gulf, BP is paying CTEH to monitor the toxic levels of the air and water. As Nicholas Cheremisinoff, a former Exxon chemical engineer and expert on pollution prevention says, this means there is “a huge incentive for them to under-report.”

This also means that if anyone sues BP for health problems caused by toxic exposure to oil or chemicals, CTEH will be the expert witness called in on BP’s behalf. Indeed, two Gulf Coast residents, Glynis Wright and Janille Turner, are now filing a class action suit against BP in Alabama, for alleged health problems caused by clean-up chemicals, claiming that Corexit is four times more toxic than the crude oil. Cheremisinoff has said he is “100 per cent certain” CTEH will be called in as expert witness for BP.

Not surprisingly, down in the Gulf CTEH is flying very low under the radar. According to a report filed by the Louisian Bucket Brigade, at a community meeting in New Orleans, CTEH was present, but without any insignia or identifying credentials, repeatedly reassuring residents that the area was safe and that heat was the main hazard facing workers. When the LBB reporter asked the EPA rep why they were working for CTEH, the rep responded: “CTEH?…don’t know them.” When the reporter pulled out a copy of the CTEH website, the EPA rep backtracked: “Oh, yeah, we look at their data.” Asked if that didn’t amount to a conflict of interest, the rep admitted, “Yeah, that is a danger.” Shortly afterwards, he backtracked again: “No, we don’t really do anything with them. Who are they again?”

This crazy, conflict-of-interest carousel--where BP pays CTEH, and the EPA relies on CTEH data to monitor BP--is so flagrant that Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) has formally requested that President Obama relieve BP of responsibility for protecting the health of workers and local residents.

CTEH and the EPA underplay the hazards, but down in the Gulf people are getting sick. Some men working on the oil spill have become ill and some hospitalized, though we don’t know the full extent because sick workers are contracted by BP not to talk to the media. BP could well stand, not for Beyond Petroleum, but for Beyond Principle. In a particularly nefarious act of cost-cutting and labor control, BP has hired prison inmates to do the clean-up, refusing to let them wear respirators, as this makes it visible that conditions are hazardous. Nor can they carry cell-phones lest they document the damage. Forced labor: slavery déjà vu. And there’s an extra perk for BP. Private companies like BP who use people on work-release get tax rebates of $2,400 for every worker they employ.

I heard many stories of people getting sick. I talked to the wife of a Vietnamese fisherman: “My husband has had chest problems ever since he went to work for BP,” she told me. “A lot of people are getting sick. And when the south wind blows, my asthma gets bad,” she said. In an internet café, I overheard a young man talking loudly into his cell about a blistering rash on his chest. “The doctor thinks it’s over-exposure to the chemicals,” he said.



The Corexit Cover-up

You have to hand it to them: BP’s image makers do a heck of a job looking on the bright side of life. Consider the multi-million dollar ads they regularly place in the New York Times (any one of which would go a long way towards putting an out-of-work fisherman on his feet). Not a drop of oil to be seen from sea to shining sea. Even the skimmers seem to be skimming up stardust. The beach are pristine. Not a dollop of oil to be seen. As Marci, a private contractor with an energy company, sardonically said to me one evening: “Clean. Clean as a baby’s butt clean. You know why? Dispersants.” Marci asked me: “Why do you think the oil stopped fifteen miles from the Florida coast? All along the Gulf, there is a fifteen-mile wide line where the oil stopped. How did it stop at that magical line?” She told me the same story others had told: “At night they go out with planes and spray it with dispersants. So the beaches look clean. But the oil is still there. Wait until the fall,” she said, “Wait until the weather cools, and the Mississippi drops. Then the oil will rise to the surface. Then the oil will come back.”

Marci was bristling with suppressed anger. ““You have to understand the tides,” she said. “Why do you think the oil is inside the booms, not outside them? It’s because of the dispersants. The dispersants sink the oil under the water. It looks like the oil is gone. But then the tides go in, taking the oil with them, and the oil goes in under the booms. Then the water cools, the oil rises, the tide goes out, and the oil is caught on the inside of the boom. Close to the marshes, close to the birds.” Travelling round Barataria Bay by boat and air, I have seen this for myself and have photos to show for it: islands surrounded by boom, with the oil trapped on the inside.

From the beginning, the use of dispersants has been clouded with controversy and cover-ups. The cutely named Corexit is made by the American company Nalco, and is famously banned in the UK and Europe on the grounds of its lethal toxicity. In April, shortly after the Deep Horizon blowout, Lisa Jackson of the EPA ruled that Corexit should only be used in “extremely rare” cases. Down in Louisiana, for decades there’s been a tightly-knit culture of mutual cronyism where local politicians and oilmen have their hands deep in each others pockets. On August 1st, the US House of Representatives Committee confirmed that for over three months, in violation of EPA’s official guidelines, the US Coast Guard had fast-tracked 74 permits giving BP the green light to “carpet-bomb” the Gulf. All told, at least 2 million gallons have been dumped into the Gulf, sprayed over the seas, islands and marshes.

The main ingredient in Corexit is 2-Butoxyethenol, which is toxic to blood, kidneys, liver and the central nervous system, also causing cancer, birth defects. Corexit is mutagenic for bacteria, huge amounts of which live in the Gulf of Mexico. Corexit ruptures red blood cells and accumulates as it moves up the food chain. The EPA, reluctant at first to release data, eventually conceded that Corexit is lethal for 50% of any group of test animals that comes in contact with it. Even the Department of Transportation classifies Corexit as Class 6.1: Poisonous Material” for transportation purposes.

The risks of Corexit to humans, the fragile marsh ecosystems and marine life are potentially staggering. Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist and tireless community activist, has testified meeting people all over the Gulf who are showing symptoms: “headaches, dizziness, sorethroats, burning eyes, rashes and blisters that go so deep, they are leaving scars.”

Dispersants have never been used in such quantities before, or at such depths in the ocean, or on open marshland. Dispersants are so dangerous because they accumulate up the food chain. Fiddler crabs absorb the toxins in their muscles and are then eaten by birds. Coyotes and feral pigs eat the bird corpses. Pelicans absorb the toxins from fish and even lightly oiled pelicans ingest the oil through their constant preening. Larger marine life like tuna, dolphins and whales carry the greatest lethal loads. Stories have been told by fishermen finding vast, floating graveyards of birds, dolphins and whale corpses near the Macondo well site, which, they say, are secretly disposed of at night.

Oil on the surface is easier to see, easier to retrieve, easier to burn. One study shows that oil mixed with Corexit is 11 times as lethal as the oil alone.

So why use such lethal toxins in the first place?

Dispersants are called dispersants because that’s what they do. They disperse the oil; they don’t destroy it. Dispersants sink the oil below the surface, make it harder to see, and therefore harder to sue BP for liability. On August 20th scientists produced new evidence of vast undersea plumes of oil drifting for miles. This week, another team of scientists in the journal Science confirmed the discovery of a massive 22 mile subsea oil plume the size of Manhattan and, most dismayingly, very little evidence that the oil was being broken down by microbes.

Chris Pinetich, a marine biologist and campaigner with the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, confirmed what Steve and others had told me: that Coast Guard planes were flying out at night spraying Corexit on the water and land. “People need to realize that their water, their air, the sand they are walking on, they things they are touching when they wake in the morning are coated with this stuff,” he said. “We are producing an experiment in the Gulf the likes of which no one has ever seen. Top scientists admit that. We are all part of the experiment.”

Death by dispersants is slow and invisible. Death by dispersants wreaks its havoc over generations. Dispersants are what Rob Nixon has called “slow violence.” We often think of violence as immediate and spectacular, bounded by space and time. Nixon recalls us to violence of a different kind: the “attritional devastation” that takes place gradually over time and space. Slow violence may be less visible, less media-sensational but enacts a toll no less lethal and lasting for being slow and out of sight.

Corexit is a form of slow violence: a conjurer’s trick, an alchemy of deceit, a sorcerer’s bargain with life and death.

And down in Barataria Bay, people cough the BP cough. Workers have rashes and burning eyes. Their ears get infected; their hands get blisters. When the southwind blows, lungs tighten and close. Some fishermen vomit, some struggle to breathe. Some get dizzy, some get diarhorrea. Some have ashthma, some fast-beating hearts. Their chests burn fire; their throats are sore. And their children cough the BP cough.



Slow Violence in the Gulf

Dispersants are not the only form of slow violence wreaked on the Gulf. The Deepwater Horizon blowout was by any standard spectacular violence: a volcanic crimson and grey apocalypse, an ocean in flames, a doomed, industrial colossus slowly pitching and sinking, taking with it nine men dead. But everyone I spoke to in the Gulf, echoed the same refrain: the Deepwater blowout was only the most recent, fast-forward, telegenic calamity on top of the permanent slow-motion catastrophe in the Gulf.

The slow violence of the oil spill comes on top of decades of slo-mo slaughter of the Gulf’s marshes and ocean waters by three forces: industrial dumping, chemical contamination and agricultural run-off; the forced engineering of the marshes by dredging and levees; and the tearing up of the vulnerable marshes by storms and hurricanes.

On July 18th, Karin and I flew in a Coast Guard plane to the Mocondo site. Two days before, BP partially capped the well. But flying over the five great passes where the Mississippi empties into the sea, I could still see great streaks of rust-red oil along the islands, and long white ribbons of dispersants in the foam-line of the currents. I already knew that beneath the Mocondo “ground zero” site lay a vast zone that had been dead for years, dead long before the Deepwater explosion: the Gulf “dead zone,” a stretch of water utterly inhospitable to life as vast as Lake Ontario.

The Gulf is one of the richest and most diverse eco-systems in the hemisphere, our largest wetlands and 40% of our fishing grounds. But since the 1950s, decades of greed and deregulation have turned the Gulf into the United States’ largest industrial wasteland. The Gulf is an immense, watery mausoleum to the hedonistic high-times of the military-industrial petro-era. If a gigantic hand emptied the Gulf like a basin of water, we would see a drowned version of industrial New Jersey: seeping oil-rigs, dumped military ordinance, unexploded bombs, thousands of miles of pipelines, a giant watery wrecking-yard, cluttered with the debris of a century of industrial waste. Miles from anywhere, the spires of an oil rig rise from the marshes, like a church to a demonic god.

Ninety per cent of all drilling for oil and gas in the United States takes place in the Gulf. This statistic hit home for me only when I opened a Hook ‘n Line fishing map. On the map, the Gulf’s waters are marked with thousands of small, red blocks so thickly clustered the map looks like a map with the measles, a map of malady. Each red square marks one of the 4,000 platforms littering the Gulf, many of them abandoned and many leaking.

The Gulf also bears the brunt of agricultural pollution from the heartland: runoff and waste from Midwest cornfields, sewage plants, golf courses, factories, nitrogen from fertilizer drain down the Mississippi into the Gulf every year. And through these damaged and vanishing marshes, massive watery superhighways have been cut, canals and passageways for the barges and huge ships on their way to the Gulf. Every straight line in the marshes is man made and a road to destruction. Every straight line has been forcibly dredged for flood control and shipping, the river and marshes forcibly reengineered by levees and canals to stop flooding, thereby fatally closing off the silt and fresh water that the marshes needs to sustain themselves, and rendering them vulnerable to the yearly slow violence of the hurricanes.

For many people I spoke to, the violence of Katrina was as great as the violence of the oil spill. Southern Louisiana is a half-drowned, shape-shifting, upside-down world, where boats float out of the treetops, and houses tilt out of the water. Everywhere we went, people still lived among the debris of Katrina. Boats flung by Katrina left to rot on the grassy verge of roads, half-wrecked houses, trees stripped bare and leaning arthritic against the evening sky.

Every day, Karin and I would drive past the huge coal and oil refineries, the Port Sulphur toxic dump, rotting boats, sunken cars, abandoned roads lined with methane barrels. Down near Venice, we found a toxic lake so rank with chemicals we can barely breathe. Not for nothing is the Deep Delta where we travelled every day, called “cancer alley,” with highest rates of cancer in the US.

One evening, Karin and I pulled into an unprepossessing marina near a town called Empire, driving carefully past the sleeping BP security guard. A few oyster-boats were festooned with yellow boom, but the rest of the marina wore a forlorn and dilapidated air. From every boat, the useless fishing nets hung like shrouds, dark relics of better times. One man moved slowly about his small houseboat. We got talking and Lloyd Boudreau invited me into his houseboat and unrolled a huge photo of the disaster Katrina had wrought: the picture of his life turned upside down by Katrina. Stubbing fingers blackened by a life on the oil rigs, he pointed to his houseboat, upturned like a toy. Katrina is the ghost he lives with, as if he has no room in his heart to begin to think about the oil spill.

Battered by the accumulated slow violence of decades of corporate greed and mismanagement, dredging, levees, and hurricanes, the Louisiana delta is vanishing before our eyes, slipping into the sea at the rate of one football field every half hour. Since the 1930s, land the size of Delaware has vanished under water.



From Blowout to Blowback

Then BP partially capped the well and the media began to cap the story. NOAA issued its report on August 5th with some implausibly neat arithmetic, declaring 75% of the oil gone. I speak to Steve on the phone. “All the media has left,” he says. “But the oil hasn’t.”

Then blowback starts. Saying 75% of the oil is “gone” sounds cheering (less cheering, of course, if one remembers that 25% of the Deepwater spill is still four times as much as the total Exxon Valdez spill), but down in the Gulf, no one is buying even the 75%-gone story.

“The oil has not gone,” Tony, an out-of-work shrimp fisherman told me, “It’s just below the surface.” “They’re just covering their butts,” says woman at a gas-station. “They want everyone to think it’s over,” Charlotte Randolph, Lafourche Parish president said of the NOAA report: “This week in Lafourche parish we had hundreds of barrels a day washing in.

I call PH Hahn, Director of Coast Zone Management in Plaquemines Parish. “I know there is plenty of oil out there,” Hahn insisted. “They say they have captured 75%, but they don’t even know how much there was to begin with. Figures lie, and liars figure,” he says.

“From the very beginning,” PJ told me, “the Coast Guard went to bed with BP. There was no oversight. They tried to cover for themselves. Now they’re trying to declare a quick ending. If they can get the President to convince everyone that it is over, then that reduces BP’s liability. There are two things working right now: there’s an election coming up and we have a President dying in the polls. They want to tell everyone it’s all ok. Now,” PJ says, “the media has left. They want to kill the story.”

“Last weekend, he continued, “we got stuck on a sandbar. When we gunned the engines, there was nothing but oil behind the boat. Then we dove with the Cousteau group again and there was plenty of oil on the bottom of the ground. The sand just covers it up. On Sunday night, we stopped at a barrier island, and as we were walking back to the boat, black oil spurted out of the hermit-crab holes. We pushed a stick down into the ground, and when we pulled the stick out, the oil began bubbling up. Fresh oil, not weathered oil. Wait till the shrimp boats start going out again. When those trawlers hit bottom, that’s when we will see a lot of things.”

A New Orleans radio poll showed 80% of respondents did not believe the NOAA report. Others offered similar testimony. Steve told me he saw a huge slick about five miles long and one mile wide on his way to work. Bob Marshall, writing for the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported seeing a great deal of oil at South Pass. Fishermen reported oil both inside Barataria Bay and out near the great Mississippi Passes and barrier islands. Riki Ott, flew out over Barataria Bay and afterwards wrote: “Bay Jimmy on the northeast side of Barataria Bay was full of oil. So was Bay Baptiste, Lake Grande Ecaille, and Billet Bay….We followed thick streamers of black oil and ribbons of rainbow sheen….The ocean’s smooth surface glinted like molten lead in the late afternoon sun. Oil. As far as we could see: oil.”



On my last evening down in the delta, fishing guide Dave Iverson took me by boat through Barataria Bay to the pelican rookeries at Queen Bess and Cat Islands near Grand Isle. As we passed through the hauntingly lovely, lacey-green filigree marshland, flocks of snowy egrets and ibis lifted gracefully into the air ahead of us, an explosion of white confetti, an exuberant celebration of life. But returning through the marshes in the twilight through the oil-damaged parts, I saw miles of tangled boom filthy with oil, and inside the boom the black marshes, blackened as if a fire from hell had roared through. And everywhere a great stillness. Not a bird to be seen. I thought of John Keats’s great line: “The sedge is wither'd from the lake and no birds sing.” I thought of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring that launched the modern environmental movement. Will this silence do the same?

On what abacus can we count the slowly dying, the invisibly hurt, the already poisoned but not yet dead? In this, our summer of magical counting. All summer we’ve been counting: numbers of gallons spilled, numbers of toxins released, numbers of birds dying, numbers of fishermen out of work. We are like children counting on our fingers in the dark, trying to ward off the shapeless face of something dreadful has been unleashed and cannot fully understand.

And down in Barataria Bay, the crabs climb out of the burning water and hold their claws to the sky. The creels stand empty; the boats lie still. Nets hang like shrouds. And children cough the BP cough.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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And now for some good news

Postby Blue » Tue Aug 24, 2010 4:51 pm

New Oil Eating Microbes Discovered in Gulf

A newly discovered type of oil-eating microbe is suddenly flourishing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientists discovered the new microbe while studying the underwater dispersion of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf following the explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

And the microbe works without significantly depleting oxygen in the water, researchers led by Terry Hazen at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., reported Tuesday in the online journal Sciencexpress.

"Our findings, which provide the first data ever on microbial activity from a deepwater dispersed oil plume, suggest" a great potential for bacteria to help dispose of oil plumes in the deep-sea, Hazen said in a statement.

The research was supported by an existing grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, a partnership led by the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Illinois that is funded by a $500 million, 10-year grant from BP. Other support came from the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Oklahoma Research Foundation.

Environmentalists have raised concerns about the giant oil spill and the underwater plume of dispersed oil, particularly its potential effects on sea life. A report just last week described a 22-mile long underwater mist of tiny oil droplets.

Microbial community 'profoundly altered'

"Our findings show that the influx of oil profoundly altered the microbial community by significantly stimulating deep-sea" cold temperature bacteria that are closely related to known petroleum-degrading microbes, Hazen reported.

Their findings are based on more than 200 samples collected from 17 deepwater sites between May 25 and June 2. They found that the dominant microbe in the oil plume is a new species, closely related to members of Oceanospirillales.

This microbe thrives in cold water, with temperatures in the deep recorded at 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit).

Hazen suggested that the bacteria may have adapted over time due to periodic leaks and natural seeps of oil in the Gulf.

Scientists also had been concerned that oil-eating activity by microbes would consume large amounts of oxygen in the water, creating a "dead zone" dangerous to other life. But the new study found that oxygen saturation outside the oil plume was 67 per cent while within the plume it was 59 per cent.

Image

Microbes (circled) are degrading oil in the deepwater plume from the BP oil spill in the Gulf, a study by Berkeley Lab researchers has shown. (Science/AAAS)

Oh, and yes I see that part of their funding came from BP, but it would have to be a huge conspiracy of a lot of scientists to make this up. See, some science is good even if the money is corporate.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby Nordic » Thu Aug 26, 2010 2:35 am

This is a hell of an article:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/08/ ... -uses.html

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/08/ ... e-now.html
Bob Naman is an analytical chemist with almost 30 years in the field, based in Mobile, Alabama.

When WKRG News 5 gave Naman samples of water from the Gulf of Mexico, Naman found oil contamination, and one of his samples actually exploded during testing due – he believes – to the presence of methane gas or Corexit, the dispersant that BP has been using in the Gulf:


WKRG.com News
But the story only starts there.

A few days ago, Naman was sent a sample of water from Cotton Bayou, Alabama.

Naman found 13.3 parts per million of the dispersant Corexit in the sample:

That’s a little perlexing, given that Admiral Thad Allen said on August 9th that dispersants have not been used in the Gulf since mid-July:

We have not used dispersant since the capping stack was put on. I believe that was the 15th of July.

***

But I would tell you, there are no dispersants being used at this time.

More imporantly, Naman told me that he found 2-butoxyethanol in the sample.

BP and Nalco – the manufacturer of Corexit – have said that dispersant containing 2-butoxyethanol is no longer being sprayed in the Gulf. As the New York Times noted in June:

Corexit 9527, used in lesser quantities during the earlier days of the spill response, is designated a chronic and acute health hazard by EPA. The 9527 formula contains 2-butoxyethanol, pinpointed as the cause of lingering health problems experienced by cleanup workers after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and propylene glycol, a commonly used solvent.

Corexit 9500, described by [Nalco's spokesman] as the “sole product” Nalco has manufactured for the Gulf since late April, contains propylene glycol and light petroleum distillates, a type of chemical refined from crude oil.

Moreover, Naman said that he searched for the main ingredient in the less toxic 9500 version – propylene glycol – but there was none present. In other words, Naman found the most toxic ingredient in 9527 and did not find the chemical marker for 9500.

Since BP and Nalco say that no dispersant containing 2-butoxyethanol has been sprayed in the Gulf for many months, that either means:

(1) BP has been lying, and it is still using 2-butoxyethanol. In other words, BP is still Corexit 9527 in the Gulf

or

(2) The dispersant isn’t breaking down nearly as quickly as hoped, and the more toxic form of Corexit used long ago is still present in the Gulf.

Naman told me he used EPA-approved methods for testing the sample, but that a toxicologist working for BP is questioning everything he is doing, and trying to intimidate Naman by saying that he’s been asked to look into who Naman is working with.

I asked Naman if he could rule out the second possibility: that the 2-butoxyethanol he found was from a months-old applications of the more toxic version of Corexit. I assumed that he would say that, as a chemist, he could not rule out that possibility.

However, Naman told me that he went to Dauphin Island, Alabama, last night. He said that he personally saw huge 250-500 gallon barrels all over the place with labels which said:

Corexit 9527

Naman took the following picture of the label:

Image



It goes on from there, more and more damning.

Yet another reason why the "terror mosque" was manufactured into a big ubiquitous story.

I don't know when I'll eat seafood again.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby Nordic » Mon Aug 30, 2010 11:35 am

They're still spraying corexit in the gulf. Lots of it.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/08/ ... rayed.html

Confirmed: Corexit Still Being Sprayed in the Gulf


Veteran chemist Bob Naman says that Corexit is still being sprayed in the Gulf, and that he found 13.3 parts per million in Cotton Bayou, Alabama.

As I pointed out last week:

Parts per million might not sound like much.

But the EPA has found that exposure to 42 parts per million killed 50% of mysid shrimp within 4 days (and most of the remaining shrimp didn't last much longer).
In response to Naman's findings, the mayor of Orange Beach - the town located on Cotton Bayou - said that the City would conduct its own, independent tests:



The City's test results have now come back, showing 66 parts per million of dispersant.



The City Engineer for Orange Beach - Kit Alexander - also states that the EPA sets the screening level for dispersant at 750 parts per million (see above video). In other words, the EPA doesn't even test for Corexit at concentrations of less than 750 ppm, even though Corexit at much lower concentrations kills marine life.

I have personally been copied with emails sent to the Coast Guard documenting continued spraying of Corexit.

And yesterday, toxicologist Dr. Ricki Ott sent the following letter to the EPA which summarizes evidence of ongoing use of dispersants in the Gulf:
Sam Coleman August 27, 2010
U.S. EPA, Region 6
1445 Ross Ave.
Dallas, TX 75202-2733 Via email: coleman.sam@epa.gov

Re: Documentation of continued dispersant spraying in near shore and inland waters from Florida to Louisiana (despite contrary claims by USCG and BP) and documentation that dispersants made oil sink

Dear Mr. Coleman,

During the August 25 Dockside Chat in Jean Lafitte, LA, it came to our attention that the federal agencies were unaware -- or lacking proof -- of the continued spraying of dispersants from Louisiana to Florida. Further, the federal agencies were woefully ignorant of the presence of subsurface oil-dispersant plumes and sunken oil on ocean and estuary water bottoms. We offer evidence to support our statements, including a recently declassified subsurface assessment plan from the Incident Command Post.

But first, you mentioned that such activities (continued spraying of dispersants and sinking oil) -- if proven -- would be "illegal." As you stated, sinking agents are not allowed in oil spill response under the National Contingency Plan Subpart J §300.910 (e): "Sinking agents shall not be authorized for application to oil discharges."

We would like to know under what laws (not regulations) such activities are illegal and what federal agency or entity has the authority to hold BP accountable, if indeed, such activity is illegal. It is not clear that the EPA has this authority.

For example, on May 19, the EPA told BP that it had 24 hours to choose a less toxic form of chemical dispersants and must apply the new form of dispersants within 72 hours of submitting the list of alternatives. Spraying of the Corexit dispersants continued unabated. On May 26, the EPA and Coast Guard told BP to eliminate the use of surface dispersants except in rare cases where there may have to be an exemption and to reduce use of dispersants by 75 percent. Yet in a letter dated July 30, the congressional Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment reported the USCG on-scene commander (OSC) had approved 74 exemption requests to spray dispersants between May 28 and July 14.

Under the National Contingency Plan Subpart J, the authorization of use §300.910 (d) gives the OSC the final authority on dispersant use: "The OSC may authorize the use of any dispersant... without obtaining the concurrence of he EPA representative... when, in the judgment of the OSC, the use of the product is necessary to prevent or substantially reduce a hazard to human life."

Given this history of events and the NCP regulation, we would like to know what federal entity actually has the final authority to: order BP to stop spraying of dispersant; declare that spraying of dispersant after issuance of a cease and desist order is illegal; and prosecute BP for using product to sink oil.

The documentation of dispersant spraying in nearshore and inland waters includes:
√ claims by USCG and BP
√ eyewitness accounts
√ fish kills in areas of eyewitness accounts
√ photos of white foam bubbles and dispersant on boat docks in areas of eyewitness accounts
√ sick people in areas of eyewitness accounts

Claims by USCG and BP - and Counter Evidence

July 30-31: Lt. Cmdr. of USCG confirms, "Dispersants are only being used over the wellhead in Louisiana."

When reached for comment, Lt. Cmdr. Dale Vogelsang, liaison officer with the United State Coast Guard, told The (Destin) Log he had contacted Unified Command and they had "confirmed" that dispersants were not being used in Florida waters.

"Dispersants are only being used over the wellhead in Louisiana," Vogelsang said. "We are working with Eglin and Hurlburt to confirm what the flight pattern may be. But right now, it appears to be a normal flight."

Vogelsang also said Unified Command confirmed to him that C-130s have never been used to distribute dispersants, as they "typically use smaller aircraft."

Contradicted by evidence in same Destin The Log article and posted on websites:
But according to an article by the 910th Airlift Wing Public Affairs Office, based in Youngstown, OH., C-130H Hercules aircraft started aerial spray operations Saturday, May 1, under the direction of the president of the United States and Secretary of Defense. "The objective of the aerial spray operation is to neutralize the oil spill with oil dispersing agents," the article states.

A Lockheed Martin July newsletter states that "Lockheed Martin aircraft, including C-130s and P-3s, have been deployed to the Gulf region by the Air Force, Coast Guard and other government customers to perform a variety of tasks, such as monitoring, mapping and dispersant spraying."

Further: "Throughout the effort, Lockheed Martin employees have been recognized for their contributions in a wide range of roles. IS&GS senior network engineer Lawrence Walker, for example, developed a solution to a critical networking issue involving two C-130's that arrived from the Air Force Reserve Command's 910th Airlift Wing at Youngstown, Ohio, as part of the cleanup mission."

May 11: USCG and BP claims of no dispersant spraying activities are further contradicted by intentional mislabeling of flight plans:

Aerial dispersant operations - Houma Status Report, Dispersant Application Guidance,
p. 4, point 8: "Use discreet IFF codes as provided on separate correspondence. This removes need to file DVFR flight plans."

Destin - Fort Walton, FL
July 30-31: Destin Mayor Sam Seevers investigating claims of dispersant spraying
Resident and former VOO worker testified that he witnessed a military C-130 "flying from the north to the south, dropping to low levels of elevation then obviously spraying or releasing an unknown substance from the rear of the plane."

The unknown substance, Yerkes wrote, "was not smoke, for the residue fell to the water, where smoke would have lingered."

Austin Norwood, whose boat is contracted by Florida Fish and Wildlife, also provided a written account of a "strange incident."

While Norwood was observing wildlife offshore, he had received a call from his site supervisor at Joe's Bayou. After telling the supervisor that he and his crewmember were not feeling well, the supervisor had the two men come in "to get checked out because a plane had been reported in our area spraying a substance on the water about 10- 20 minutes before."

Norwoord complained of a bad headache, nasal congestion while his crewmember said he had a metallic taste in his mouth.

After filling out an incident report, both Norwood and his crewmember were directed to go to the hospital. The following day, the two men were once again "asked to go to the hospital for blood tests."

Aug. 2: Joe Yerkes reported sludgy brown oil and foamy white dispersant bubbles in Destin and 40 miles east in St. Joe Bay, just days before a fish kill of croaker, flounder, trout, and baitfish on August 5.

Perdido Pass, AL
Aug. 24: Received report of oil debris from anchor chain while weighing anchor at position 30*15.6 N 87*32.7 W, 0.6 nm east of Perdido Pass sea buoy. Samples taken.

Dauphin Island, AL
Aug. 21: Fisherman Chris Bryant documents Corexit 9500 use

Aug. 24: Washington's Blog interview with chemist Bob Naman
Bob Naman is the analytical chemist who performed the tests featured in WKRG's broadcast. He was interviewed by or an August 24 report. Highlights include:
• Naman found 2-butoxyethanol in the Cotton Bayou sample. [Ingredient in 'discontinued' Corexit 9527.]
• Naman said found no propylene glycol, the main ingredient of Corexit 9500.
• Naman said he went to Dauphin Island, Alabama last night and while there observed many 250-500 gallon barrels which were labeled Corexit 9527. Naman took pictures that he will soon be sharing.
• Naman said he saw men applying the Corexit 9527 while he was in Dauphin Island and also in Bayou La Batre, Alabama.
• Naman said the Corexit 9527 is being haphazardly sprayed at night and is impacting beach sands in a highly concentrated form.

Bayou La Batre, AL
Aug. 4: Fisherman Chris Byrant documents oil-dispersant in Mississippi Sound, northwest of Katrina Cut, in an area open to fishing in state waters between Dauphin Island and Bayou La Batre

Aug. 19, Aug. 21: Rocky Kistner with NRDC documents use of Corexit 9527a and Corexit 9500 and oil-dispersant visible sheen in area open to fishing in state waters
PHOTOS
Aug. 23: Natural Resources Defense Council Switchboard posting
We spotted huge plastic containers marked with Corexit warning labels on the dock public docks near Bayou La Batre. ...
The next day at a town hall meeting in Buras, LA, BP Mobile Incident Commander Keith Seilhan was asked about the use of chemical dispersants. "We are not using dispersants and haven't been for some time," he said.
But when asked whether contractors who operate in state waters could be, he said he could not be certain. "We have lots of contractors, but no one should be using them. If they are, we need to know about it and stop it."

Long Beach, MS
Aug. 8: Fisherman James "Catfish" Miller sampled the subsurface oil plume (VIDEO)

Miller tied an oil absorbent pad onto a pole and lowered it 8-12 feet down into deceptively clear ocean water. When he pulled it up, the pad was soaked in oil, much to the startled amazement of his guests, including Dr. Timothy Davis with the Department of Health and Human Services National Disaster Medical System. Repeated samples produced the same result. Three weeks earlier, there had been a massive fish kill along the same shoreline from Gulfport to Pass Christian.

Aug. 23: The methods for sampling subsurface oil used by Mr. Miller are also being used by Incident Command for the Deepwater Horizon as evidenced in a declassified document (p. 3).

Hancock County, MS
Aug. 23: Dispersant container found in Bayou Caddy Hancock County marsh. White foam indicative of dispersant use in marsh. Samples taken and being analyzed.

Barataria, LA
July 31: Documentation of oil in Barataria Bay.

Venice, LA
Aug. 11 (reported): Contractor sick from dispersant spraying

Summary: Based on these documents, and more, we believe that dispersant spraying in inland and near shore waters across the Gulf of Mexico from Louisiana to the western Florida panhandle is occurring now and has continued unabated (before) and since July 19, the date that the seafood safety panel proclaimed was the last day dispersants were sprayed. Based on these documents, and more, we believe that the dispersant spraying in inland and near shore waters is being conducted for the sole purpose of sinking the visible oil, an activity that is supposedly illegal. According to the University of South Florida, dispersed oil micro-droplets have been documented throughout the Gulf water column and are likely to affect the entire ecosystem.

The inability of the federal and state agents who attended the Dockside Chat in Jean Lafitte, LA, on Aug. 25 to find recent subsurface oil and ocean bottom oil or dispersant spraying activity in inland or near shore waters gives us zero confidence in these same agencies' declaration that they can find no oil or dispersant in Gulf seafood product.

Sincerely,

Riki Ott, PhD
Ultimate Civics Project
Earth Island Institute
POB 1460
Cordova, AK 99574
970-903-6818
www.RikiOtt.com

"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby Simulist » Mon Aug 30, 2010 12:19 pm

Corexit seems to be working out pretty well for BP.

It hides the evidence by dispersing it.

Later, those who saw what happened, and would remember it, will be dead.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby ninakat » Mon Aug 30, 2010 2:37 pm

via Cryptogon:

EXCLUSIVE: Tests find sickened family has 50.3 ppm of Corexit’s 2-butoxyethanol in swimming pool — JUST ONE HOUR NORTH OF TAMPA (lab report included)
August 30th, 2010 at 09:13 AM

*Exclusive* Credit: FloridaOilSpillLaw.com

“Our heads are still swimming,” stated Barbara Schebler of Homosassa, Florida, who received word last Friday that test results on the water from her family’s swimming pool showed 50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, a marker for the dispersant Corexit 9527A used to break up and sink BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

Image

The problems began for the Scheblers a few weeks after the April 20 blow-out. “Our first clue were rashes we both got early in May. Both my husband and I couldn’t get rid of the rashes and had to get cream from our doctor,” Schebler noted, “I never had a rash in my life.”

Then, on “July [23], my husband Warren mowed the lawn. It was hot so he got in the pool to cool off afterward. That afternoon he had severe diarrhea and very dark urine. This lasted about 2 days,” she revealed.

Initially, they reasoned this was caused by the heat. The following week Mr. Schebler again mowed the lawn and went in the pool, and again he was sickened with the same severe symptoms.

Suspicious that the pool may be a problem, the family set out to get the water tested. “We have a 15 year old and felt we owed it to him to live in a clean, healthy environment,” said Mrs. Schebler.

. . .

The question remains, how did this chemical find its way into the Schebler’s pool in such a high concentration?

“At night we would hear very low aircraft, including helicopters. We figured they were just heading to help out in the Gulf,” and Mrs. Schebler added that she was told, “The prevailing winds from the Gulf are easterly — and when they spray, it is airborne — and that we are right in the path of those winds.” It was also noted that, “We had alot of rain here before my husband got sick, and wondered what was going on… We had been having daily downpours in July.”

There is no way to be sure at this point. Though she stated, “Friends a few miles away… are having [a] similar situation. They are now thinking of getting their water tested.”

As for the family’s current physical well being, “We both still have rashes that will not go away if we stop the cream we were given by our doctor. Warren still gets diarrhea on and off – this never happened with this frequency before.”

. . .
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby DoYouEverWonder » Wed Sep 01, 2010 7:00 pm

Oil spill: BP reverses, admits there's oil in local waters

August 29, 2010

Despite persistent denials from BP last week, thousands of pounds of weathered oil is being pulled from under the surface of Pensacola Bay every day.


During more than a dozen interviews last week, BP officials and spokespeople for a number of government agencies working on the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill response denied knowledge of oil in the bay.

Even as they spoke, however, Escambia County officials and local fishermen were reporting finding weathered oil, as they've been doing for weeks. BP's own crews were hand-scooping it up, and a submerged-oil team from BP's Deepwater Horizon Response Incident Command Post in Mobile was investigating.

"BP says it's all gone, but it's not. I've known it was out there for a month," said a commercial fisherman who asked not to be identified because he is working for BP in the cleanup and feared losing his job.

"We were recovering it in a boat ... scooping it up out of sand and dumping it into bags. They're just trying to keep it quiet. Out of sight, out of mind."

On Friday, Coast Guard Lt. Stephen West with the Incident Command Post finally confirmed an area of oil a quarter of a mile long and up to 50 to 60 feet off Barrancas Beach at Pensacola Naval Air Station.

He also confirmed that buckets of sunken oil were being pulled up in another area of Pensacola Bay, near Fort Pickens at Gulf Islands National Seashore.

On Saturday, Scott Piggott, who heads the Escambia and Santa Rosa cleanup operation for BP, said cleanup workers began noticing the submerged oil at Barrancas Beach in July.

"The last month, we've spent considerable effort to get people to concentrate on that," he said. "Then we notice the same phenomenon at the Fort Pickens site, and cleanup has been going on there for two weeks."

The statements from West and Piggott follow the federal government's claim earlier this month that 70 percent of the oil is gone, with much of it dissolved like sugar in tea, according to one White House official said earlier this month.

They also came after Escambia County supplied the News Journal with two of BP's daily reports to the county about the cleanup.

cont....

http://www.pnj.com/article/20100829/NEWS01/8290333/Oil-spill-BP-reverses-admits-there-s-oil-in-local-waters
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby Jeff » Thu Sep 02, 2010 11:41 am

BREAKING NEWS
Oil rig explodes in Gulf of Mexico
Posted: Sep 02, 2010 11:19 AM EDT Updated: Sep 02, 2010 11:34 AM EDT

GRAND ISLE, LA (WAFB) - The Coast Guard is responding to another oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

Dozens are reported injured.

According to the Coast Guard, it happened 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay.

Rescue choppers from New Orleans and Houston are responding.

The injured will be taken to hospitals in various coastal areas from Houston to the Louisiana/Mississippi border area.


http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=13089364
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby crikkett » Thu Sep 02, 2010 11:49 am

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/09/02/gu ... p&wom=true

Cap on BP's ruptured oil well to be removed
By the CNN Wire Staff
September 2, 2010 -- Updated 0927 GMT (1727 HKT)

(CNN) -- Crews are expected to try to remove the blowout preventer on BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, said Thad Allen, the government's point man on the oil disaster.

But first, crews must pull a capping stack on top of the ruptured well, which was used to help seal it. The cap is expected to be off Thursday afternoon.

Officials plan to detach the blowout preventer from the well and replace it with a new one, a procedure aimed at paving the way for a final fix. But the effort to permanently seal the ruptured oil well has stalled because of turbulent seas.

"We've run into a weather window that's got us in a hold," Allen said. "If we can get to the blowout preventer sooner rather than later, we will do that."

BP announced the postponement of the procedure on its Twitter page Monday. Seas are starting to calm in the Gulf, but may have eased enough until Friday or sometime during the weekend, Allen said.

Waves of approximately four feet or less would be necessary for the work to resume, according to Allen.

He had warned last week that changes in weather could result in a change in schedule. Last week, the operation was delayed as engineers tried to fish out pieces of drill pipe stuck inside the blowout preventer.

Removal of the device will need to be done carefully, as the blowout preventer may hold valuable forensic evidence as to why it failed on April 20, triggering the explosion that killed 11 rig workers and caused the massive oil spill.

Allen said teams are working closely with joint investigation groups, engineers, scientists and the Department of Justice to ensure the machinery is handled correctly.

The well has been capped since July 15, and no new oil is flowing into the Gulf.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby DoYouEverWonder » Thu Sep 02, 2010 3:24 pm

One Day Before Its Gulf Oil Rig Exploded, Mariner Energy Said Obama ‘Is Trying To Break Us’ With Moratorium

The U.S. Coast Guard said this morning that a natural gas and oil drilling platform exploded 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana. A Coast Guard spokesperson said the platform, Vermilion Oil Rig 360, is an oil and gas platform in 2,500 feet of water and is owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy. It is not currently producing oil or gas. (The AP updates its story to note the platform was in production at the time of the fire.) Apache Corp. recently purchased Mariner in a multi-billion dollar deal.

Just yesterday, however, the Financial Times reported that employees from Apache and Mariner, along with thousands of oil industry workers, rallied in Houston to protest the Obama administration’s offshore drilling moratorium that was designed as a safety precaution after BP’s disastrous Gulf oil spill. A Mariner Energy employee chastised the Obama administration for its drilling moratorium, which would not have affected the rig that exploded today:

Companies ranging from Chevron to Apache bussed in up to 5,000 employees to the Houston convention centre to underline to Washington the industry’s contribution to the country. [...]

“I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this administration is trying to break us,” said Barbara Dianne Hagood, senior landman for Mariner Energy, a small company. “The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the gulf coast, gulf coast employees and gulf coast residents.”

Apache Corp. recently agreed to buy BP assets in order to help the British oil giant meet its financial obligations as a result of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Thirteen workers were on the rig when it exploded; the Coast Guard has said that “all 13 workers involved in the production platform explosion are accounted for, but one person is injured.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/02/mariner-oil-obama/


Seems they don't need Obombya's help, they're doing a good enough job destroying themselves and the rest of us with them.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Sep 07, 2010 2:54 pm

Blood Tests Show Elevated Level of Toxic Hydrocarbons in Gulf Residents


A number of different chemists are finding elevated levels of toxic hydrocarbons in the bloodstream of Gulf coast residents.

What is most disturbing about these results is that people who simply live near the water are showing higher than normal levels of toxic chemicals. These are not fishermen, shrimpers, oil workers or others who work on the water.

Jerry Cope recently wrote about his test results in a must-read essay at Huffington Post.

Several Gulf coast residents described their test results in the following video:



And the Intel Hub has uploaded some of the other test reports.

The local ABC news affiliate in Pensacola, Florida - ABC3 Wear - covered the story:
Several residents of Orange Beach say the oil spill has been making them sick...and they have the test results to prove it.

Gerry Cope, Margaret Carrouth and Robin Young were all feeling the same symptoms of headaches, watery eyes, and breathing problems...

All three had blood samples taken at the beginning of August...

Tests revealed each had elevated levels of the Hydrocarbons Ethyl Benzene and Xylene.

Bob Naman, a chemist out of Mobile, analyzed the results.

"He shows three times the amount you typically find in someone's blood."

"These people are from different backgrounds, and from different walks of life, all showing same similar organic compounds in blood, says to me its very likely in the air."


Background levels of these chemicals were taken from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's Fourth National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals.

It is well known that oil fires can increase the levels of ethyl benzene and xylene in people's bloodstream. For example, in studying Gulf War illness, the National Defense Research Institute found that exposure to the Kuwaiti oil fires set by Saddam Hussein increased ethyl benzene levels in firefighters more than 10 times - from .052 to .53 micrograms per liter - and more than doubled xylene levels:
Table 3.6
VOC Concentrations in Blood in U.S. Personnel
(µg/l)
VOC Kuwait City Personnel
(Group I) Firefighters
(Group II) U.S. Reference
(Control)
Benzene 0.035 0.18 0.066
Ethyl-benzene 0.075 0.53 0.052
m,p-Xylene 0.14 0.41 0.18
o-Xylene 0.096 0.26 0.10
Toluene 0.24 1.5 0.30

A geochemist from East Carolina University - who was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation - says that evaporation and storms can carry toxic hydrocarbons from the Gulf oil and dispersants inland:



As I noted last week, scientists have found that applying Corexit to Gulf crude oil releases 35 times more toxic chemicals into the water column than would be released with crude alone.

Is it possible that the massive application of Corexit dispersant is creating a situation analogous to ongoing oil fires: ongoing release of large quantities of toxic components of crude oil?

It is important not to be alarmist about the dangers of the oil/dispersant mixture to human health, but it is equally important to fully study the issue, and not to let politics get in the way of science.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much worse

Postby t-an » Tue Sep 07, 2010 11:57 pm

http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2010/ ... -just.html


The latest satellite data establishes that the North Atlantic Current (also called the North Atlantic Drift) no longer exists and along with it the Norway Current. These two warm water currents are actually part of the same system that has several names depending on where in the Atlantic Ocean it is. The entire system is a key part of the planet's heat regulatory system; it is what keeps Ireland and the United Kingdom mostly ice free and the Scandinavia countries from being too cold; it is what keeps the entire world from another Ice Age. This Thermohaline Circulation System is now dead in places and dying in others.

Solution: (?)

Let us get the facts and call the corporate and government to task on these issues now or face worldwide catechisms of biblical proportions.



Time will tell. There is high probability that the events in the GOM will have effects of colossal proportions, exactly what they are remains to be seen. I don’t see articles such as these as either positive or negative, rather “the writings on the wall”; which might help people make wise choices in the here and now. Got your Berkey?

http://www.berkeywater.com/

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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby Peachtree Pam » Tue Sep 14, 2010 4:49 am

Thought I'd post a link to this great site which compiles up-to-date bulletins concerning the on-going horror in the Gulf. It gives info on all four Gulf states involved, contrasting on-the ground reports with "official statements". These are usually small video clips from local TV stations.

Apologies if already posted:

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/new-o ... -louisiana
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby norton ash » Tue Sep 14, 2010 10:58 am

T-an's post is SPAM. Link to a loony site re the Current, then a link to an ad for water filters. Do not want.

t-an wrote:http://europebusines.blogspot.com/2010/08/special-post-life-on-this-earth-just.html


The latest satellite data establishes that the North Atlantic Current (also called the North Atlantic Drift) no longer exists and along with it the Norway Current. These two warm water currents are actually part of the same system that has several names depending on where in the Atlantic Ocean it is. The entire system is a key part of the planet's heat regulatory system; it is what keeps Ireland and the United Kingdom mostly ice free and the Scandinavia countries from being too cold; it is what keeps the entire world from another Ice Age. This Thermohaline Circulation System is now dead in places and dying in others.

Solution: (?)

Let us get the facts and call the corporate and government to task on these issues now or face worldwide catechisms of biblical proportions.



Time will tell. There is high probability that the events in the GOM will have effects of colossal proportions, exactly what they are remains to be seen. I don’t see articles such as these as either positive or negative, rather “the writings on the wall”; which might help people make wise choices in the here and now. Got your Berkey?

http://www.berkeywater.com/

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Postby Perelandra » Tue Sep 14, 2010 11:21 am

Predictions of a new Little Ice Age may be loony, but I actually DO want a Berkey.

Thanks for the informative looking link, Pam.
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