'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 wors

Postby elfismiles » Tue Dec 28, 2010 1:25 pm

hyperlinks in original at links...


The Oil Slick BP Tried To Hide Has Been Discovered
In Thick Layers On the Sea Floor Over An Area of Several Thousand Square Miles

by Washington's Blog

BP and the government famously declared that most of the oil had disappeared.


But as I've noted, as much as 98% of the oil is still in the ocean.

I have repeatedly pointed out that BP and the government applied massive amounts of dispersant to the Gulf Oil Spill in an effort to sink and hide the oil. Many others said the same thing.

BP and the government denied this, of course.

But the oil is not remaining hidden.


Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal noted on December 9th:

A university scientist and the federal government say they have found persuasive evidence that oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill is settling on the ocean floor.

The new findings, from scientists at the University of South Florida and from a broad government effort, mark the latest indication that environmental damage from the blowout of a BP PLC well could be significant where it's hardest to find: deep under the Gulf's surface.

***

Scientists who have been on research cruises in the Gulf in recent days report finding layers of residue up to several centimeters thick from what they suspect is BP oil.

The material appears in spots across several thousand square miles of seafloor, they said. In many of those spots, they said, worms and other marine life that crawl along the sediment appear dead, though many organisms that can swim appear healthy.


***


Tests now have started to link some oil in the sediment to the BP well could add to the amount of money BP ends up paying to compensate for the spill's damage.

***


The test results also raise questions about the possible downsides of the government's use of chemical dispersants to fight the spill.

***

Under federal direction, about 1.8 million gallons of dispersants were sprayed on the spilled oil in an effort to break it up into tiny droplets that natural ocean microbes could eat up. At the time, officials said the dispersants shouldn't cause oil from the spill to sink to the seafloor. However, more recently, a federal report said dispersants may have helped some spilled oil sink to the sediment.

Scientific teams have reported in recent months finding a strange substance on the Gulf floor, in some cases as far as about 80 miles from BP's ill-fated Macondo well, which blew out in April and spilled an estimated 4.1 million barrels of oil into the Gulf before it was capped.

***
"The chemical signatures are identical," said Mr. Hollander, who found the contaminated samples in an area of the Gulf floor off the Florida Panhandle. Although it's conceivable the tests could show a false match with the BP oil, "the statistical probability of something like that is unimaginable," Mr. Hollander said.

The federal government also has found oil matching Macondo oil in Gulf sediment, Steve Murawski, a top National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist, said in an interview. He declined to disclose how much sediment contamination the government found, or exactly where in the Gulf it was, saying experts still are analyzing the test results.

***
Samantha Joye, a University of Georgia oceanographer, also has found what she believes to be evidence of BP oil in Gulf sediment. She is awaiting lab results tracing the chemical fingerprints of sediment samples she took.

On a research cruise in the Gulf that ended Friday, she saw worms that crawl along the Gulf floor "just decimated," she said. But eels and fish, which can swim away, often appeared fine, she said.


Entire article here:

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2 ... -been.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? ... &aid=22487

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

Postby Jeff » Sun Jan 02, 2011 6:20 pm



Activist, Mother, and Voice of the Gulf People, Kindra Arnesen sat down with the Project Gulf Impact team, Matt Smith, Heather Rally, and Gavin Garrison recently to reveal shocking new information about the BP oil disaster and why the whole world should be paying attention to the Gulf.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby Jeff » Sun Jan 16, 2011 3:11 pm

Published on Friday, January 14, 2011 by The Nation

The Search for BP's Oil

by Naomi Klein

For the scientists aboard the WeatherBird II, the recasting of the Deepwater Horizon spill as a good-news story about a disaster averted has not been easy to watch. Over the past seven months, they, along with a small group of similarly focused oceanographers from other universities, have logged dozens of weeks at sea in cramped research vessels, carefully measuring and monitoring the spill's impact on the delicate and little-understood ecology of the deep ocean. And these veteran scientists have seen things that they describe as unprecedented. Among their most striking findings are graveyards of recently deceased coral, oiled crab larvae, evidence of bizarre sickness in the phytoplankton and bacterial communities, and a mysterious brown liquid coating large swaths of the ocean floor, snuffing out life underneath. All are worrying signs that the toxins that invaded these waters are not finished wreaking havoc and could, in the months and years to come, lead to consequences as severe as commercial fishery collapses and even species extinction.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the most outspoken scientists doing this research come from Florida and Georgia, coastal states that have so far managed to avoid offshore drilling. Their universities are far less beholden to Big Oil than, say, Louisiana State University, which has received tens of millions from the oil giants. Again and again these scientists have used their independence to correct the official record about how much oil is actually out there, and what it is doing under the waves.

One of the most prominent scientists on the BP beat is David Hollander, a marine geochemist at the University of South Florida. Hollander's team was among the first to discover the underwater plumes in May and the first to trace the oil definitively to BP's well. In August, amid the claims that the oil had magically disappeared, Hollander and his colleagues came back from a cruise with samples proving that oil was still out there and still toxic to many marine organisms, just invisible to the human eye. This research, combined with his willingness to bluntly contradict federal agencies, has made Hollander something of a media darling. When he is not at sea, there is a good chance he is in front of a TV camera. In early December, he agreed to combine the two, allowing me and filmmaker Jacqueline Soohen to tag along on a research expedition in the northern Gulf of Mexico, east of the wellhead.

...

According to experiments performed by scientists at the University of South Florida, there is good reason for alarm. When it was out in the gulf in August, the WeatherBird II collected water samples from multiple locations. Back at the university lab, John Paul, a professor of biological oceanography, introduced healthy bacteria and phytoplankton to those water samples and watched what happened. What he found shocked him. In water from almost half of the locations, the responses of the organisms "were genotoxic or mutagenic"-which means the oil and dispersants were not only toxic to these organisms but caused changes to their genetic makeup. Changes like these could manifest in a number of ways: tumors and cancers, inability to reproduce, a general weakness that would make these organisms more susceptible to prey-or something way weirder.

Before we left on the cruise, I interviewed Paul in his lab; he explained that what was so "scary" about these results is that such genetic damage is "heritable," meaning the mutations can be passed on. "It's something that can stand around for a very long time in the Gulf of Mexico," Paul said. "You may be genetically altering populations of fish, or zooplankton, or shrimp, or commercially important organisms.... Is the turtle population going to have more tumors on them? We really don't know. And it'll take three to five years to actually get a handle on that."

...


http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/14-4
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby Nordic » Mon Jan 17, 2011 4:50 am

http://www.businessinsider.com/anderson ... ort-2011-1

I wish I were making this up, or that it was an Onion piece or something .....



Gov. Report Blames Anderson Cooper For Public Outrage Over BP Oil Spill


Was Anderson Cooper digging too deep while reporting on the BP oil spill?

According to a government report on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Yes.

President Obama established the National Commission on the BP Oil Disaster last May, and it released its official report last Tuesday.

It may or may not come as a shock that the commission, established at the peak of the nation's outrage with BP and its CEO Tony "I just want my life back" Hayward, identifies a new scapegoat culprit: the media.

In particular, the report accuses Anderson Cooper of intentionally seeking out people that were upset with the government response to the disaster:

Journalists encouraged state and local officials and residents to display their anger at the federal response, and offered coverage when they did. Anderson Cooper reportedly asked a Parish President to bring an angry, unemployed offshore oil worker on his show. When the Parish President could not promise the worker would be “angry,” both were disinvited.

The accusation could be particularly damning as it is not simply a criticism flung by one of Cooper's competitors -- but a serious statement in a formal, official government report that took six months to write.

It's not as if the government is simply in the habit of blaming the press for things willy nilly. Oh no, never.

Cooper shot back at the report in this statement to the New York Post: "This unattributed statement is completely false . . . [the claim] that it was journalists who were encouraging residents and state and local leaders to ‘display their anger at the federal response’ is offensive.”

Cooper then went on to mention the report on his RidicuList on CNN last Thursday:

"The idea that journalists were manufacturing anger...is preposterous....It's re-writing history."
"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 wors

Postby Bruce Dazzling » Mon Jan 17, 2011 11:40 am

Nordic wrote:http://www.businessinsider.com/anderson-cooper-accused-of-soliciting-controversy-over-bp-oil-spill-in-government-report-2011-1

I wish I were making this up, or that it was an Onion piece or something .....



Gov. Report Blames Anderson Cooper For Public Outrage Over BP Oil Spill


Was Anderson Cooper digging too deep while reporting on the BP oil spill?

According to a government report on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Yes.

President Obama established the National Commission on the BP Oil Disaster last May, and it released its official report last Tuesday.

It may or may not come as a shock that the commission, established at the peak of the nation's outrage with BP and its CEO Tony "I just want my life back" Hayward, identifies a new scapegoat culprit: the media.

In particular, the report accuses Anderson Cooper of intentionally seeking out people that were upset with the government response to the disaster:

Journalists encouraged state and local officials and residents to display their anger at the federal response, and offered coverage when they did. Anderson Cooper reportedly asked a Parish President to bring an angry, unemployed offshore oil worker on his show. When the Parish President could not promise the worker would be “angry,” both were disinvited.

The accusation could be particularly damning as it is not simply a criticism flung by one of Cooper's competitors -- but a serious statement in a formal, official government report that took six months to write.

It's not as if the government is simply in the habit of blaming the press for things willy nilly. Oh no, never.

Cooper shot back at the report in this statement to the New York Post: "This unattributed statement is completely false . . . [the claim] that it was journalists who were encouraging residents and state and local leaders to ‘display their anger at the federal response’ is offensive.”

Cooper then went on to mention the report on his RidicuList on CNN last Thursday:

"The idea that journalists were manufacturing anger...is preposterous....It's re-writing history."


Yes, that crack reporter and famous anti-government rabble rouser, Anderson Cooper, is the problem!

Oh shit, I almost forgot ... fuck Obama.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby Hugo Farnsworth » Mon Jan 17, 2011 3:31 pm

USG = PR flunky for BP. That's rich, and sad. :tear

Could go onto the Onion website without any changes.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby Pele'sDaughter » Thu Jan 20, 2011 11:56 am

The guy has been on Rense, so who knows.

http://worldvisionportal.org/wordpress/ ... tic-storm/

The Perfect Genetic Storm – Synthetic DNA and the Gulf Blue Plague

January 19, 2011

http://blueplague.org

There’s a new proprietary recipe being force-fed to all of us here on the Gulf of Mexico that is now becoming available worldwide. Although this recipe has been closely guarded for 8 months, we were able to break it down after examining the plentiful supply us “Gulf Coasters” have available here. The ingredients are abundantly available while both the recipe and the brewing process are not as secret as everyone had thought.

THE GULF BLUE PLATE (BP) SPECIAL

Fill a large bowl with saline ocean water, add a generous proportion of thick crude oil, then pour in a cup of liquid Correct-it (available from Nalco under the brand name Corexit) making sure you don’t spill any on yourself, stir gently, and then let it sit for a day or two. As the newly thinned oil mixture begins to sink to the bottom of the bowl, make sure the resulting gasses are allowed to ever-so-slightly bubble in orange foam on the surface. This will let you know you’re ready for the next and most important step.

Quickly add Syn-Bio (available from JCVI, SGI, and other private companies) along with a colloidal mixture containing iron, copper, and other natural elements to begin the interactive brewing process. Let it sit for no less than 6-9 months making sure nothing is allowed to disturb it. When there is no more gas coming to the surface and the mixture on the bottom turns into a gelatinous black goo, the first stage of the recipe is finished.

The amazing thing about this new state-of-the-art recipe is what it becomes after the initial first stage brewing process is finished. No-one knows! It’s no wonder some have begun to refer to it as The Blue Plate (BP) Special. You can be assured that once the second stage of this concoction begins to release its mutated biological ingredients, as it appears to have done so already, the rest of the world will abruptly notice.

OIL SPILL OR OIL FLOW?

There was never a BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. When you fill a glass with water, bump into something while holding it in your hand, and then some of the water splashes out, that’s a spill. When you turn on a water faucet and allow a continual flow to fill the glass so that it’s constantly overflowing, that’s not a spill. Because the multiple BP drilling operations that began at Mississippi Canyon 252 in 2009 fractured the floor of the Gulf of Mexico sometime before April 22, 2010, there is a continuous flow of crude oil and, especially, oil derived gasses such as methane. That’s called an oil and gas flow.

Since the Gulf has a steady flow of toxic crude oil and gasses, then how do you stop it? You can’t. The only solution to the problem is to find a way to eliminate it before it has a chance to surface en mass. This is exactly what has, is, and will continue to occur in the Gulf of Mexico.

SYNTHETIC GENOME BIOREMEDIATION

Toxic crude oil and gas can be changed, altered, or eliminated by microbes. Natural microorganisms in all the oceans, such as bacteria, have been known to do this over time, usually lasting decades and beyond. It’s a slow natural process. Yes, natural biology can do the job, but under continual flow conditions there is no possible way all the hydrocarbon-hungry microbes in the entire world can eliminate that much oil and gas fast enough. Time is the critical factor.

For the past decade, synthetic biology has been the new science realm. We now have engineered genetic biology that synthetically creates RNA and DNA sequences for both viruses and bacteria.

In the 1980’s, the fad was designer jeans. Now, we have designer genes.

Soon after the Deepwater Horizon inferno, U.S. government scientists – with grant funds supplied by British Petroleum – started giving us solid clues as to what they were doing with all that crude oil and gas. In May 2010, National Geographic quoted Dr. Terry Hazen from the U.S. government’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who said,

“…we could introduce a genetic material into indigenous bugs via a bacteriophage – a virus that infects bacteria – to give local microbes DNA that would allow them to break down oil. Either that, he said, or a lab could create a completely new organism that thrives in the ocean, eats oil, and needs a certain stimulant to live…”

There were two possible solutions according to Dr. Hazen, who is considered to be the foremost crude oil bioremediation expert in the world. Either use synthetically engineered viruses called bacteriophages, or ‘phages’, to infect and alter the genetics of indigenous Gulf bacteria; or, synthetically create an entirely new organism, i.e. a new species of bacteria, to eat up the oil and/or gas and introduce it into the Gulf of Mexico.

In September 2010, Duke University gave us another confirmation as to what was going on in the Gulf:

“In a paper published in the journal Science, Terry Hazen and his colleagues at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory discovered in late May through early June 2010 that a previously unknown species of cold-water hydrocarbon-eating bacteria have been feasting on the underwater oil plumes degrading them at accelerated rates.”

Natural microorganisms are well known to biologists and their genetic sequences are catalogued in a worldwide library. The public can even access the entire genetic library on the internet. But here we have a new and never before identified species of bacteria that suddenly “appears” in the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s eating up the oil at a much faster speed than any natural bacteria possibly could or ever has.

In August 2010, Science Magazine reported about bacteria that were gobbling up the Gulf oil and how it was being done by microorganisms that were not typical:

Hazen’s team found that microbes inside the plume samples were packed more than twice as densely as microbes outside it. Even more encouraging, the genes specifically geared to degrade hydrocarbons were more common in the plume as well, implying that it’s not just general bacteria that are taking on the plume.

Terry Hazen had described how the genes of a certain microbe that were “geared” (created) to eat-up crude oil were not just thriving within the oil plume, but were rapidly duplicating more than twice as fast as those same microbes outside the oil plume. He reveals that indigenous “general” or natural bacteria in the Gulf are not responsible for this amazing outcome. Obviously, he knows exactly what’s doing the job at such an accelerated rate: Synthetic genome bacteria created specifically to consume hydrocarbons, crude oil.

Dr. Terry Hazen is just one source, so I don’t expect you to believe synthetically engineered organisms are being used in the Gulf based solely on what he has said, even though he’s an absolute expert scientist in his field. What if I were to tell you that British Petroleum has admitted to using synthetic designer gene organisms in the Gulf? Would that help convince you?

In September 2010, reporter Stephen Fry of the UK’s BBC was granted a video interview with Mike Utsler, the Chief Operating Officer of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration. Here’s what Mr. Utsler publicly admitted on camera:

“There is a new form of microbiology that is attacking this (oil) plume and using it as a food source”.

You can view him saying this on our YouTube Channel or on our Gulf Blue Plague internet blog at BP Admits Using Synthetic Microbes in Gulf of Mexico. This 17 second video snippet is taken from a November 7, 2010 broadcast entitled Has the Oil Really Gone? which is available for viewing at BBC TWO.* Note how Utsler is cut off by his own people at BP immediately after stating this and the interview was abruptly ended.

* It appears that the BBC has now restricted this video so that it can no longer be viewed from within the US.

A NEW FORM OF MICROBIOLOGY

A “new form of microbiology” is not a natural biological organism. Genome scientist J. Craig Venter, PhD, the founder of Synthetic Genomics Inc. and JCVI, clearly defined this new biological structure on May 27, 2010 in his prepared testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce:

“One of the major advantages of synthetic genomics is that there is no need to have access to a physical supply of a particular DNA sequence. Sequence fragments are simply created de novo by chemical synthesis and assembled into entire chromosomes and organisms. This ability to synthesize (write) DNA and use it in the construction of new cells can catalyze a major change in what organisms can be engineered to do.

…these [synthetic genome] technologies could be used to produce bioremediation techniques.

In 2003, JCVI successfully synthesized a small virus, approximately six thousand base pairs long, that infects bacteria. By 2008, the JCVI team was able to synthesize a small bacterial genome.”

Now it’s easy to understand exactly what Terry Hazen, PhD, and BP’s Mike Utsler were revealing with regards to the creation of new genetically engineered microorganisms – either viruses that attack bacteria or bacteria themselves – within the Gulf of Mexico.

AN OBSCURE FAMILY OF SUPERHUMAN MICROBES

The latest development in the Gulf is how an incomprehensible bacterium is remarkably eating up the methane gas. It appears that engineered designer genes have also been used to remove the gas just as they have been used to consume the oil. The common denominator is that neither of these microbes are natural microorganisms. This should come as no surprise.

Microbiologist David Valentine at the University of California at Santa Barbara stated,

“Within a matter of months, the bacteria completely removed that methane. The bacteria kicked on more effectively than we expected.”

It sounds to me that this created synthetic genome microbe far exceeded the engineering and programming expectations.

According to a Fox Business report,

“This discovery offered a rare glimpse into the remarkable abilities of an obscure family of microbes in the depths of the Gulf”.

I agree. It is scientifically incomprehensible that any natural microorganism could do this and synthetically engineered microbes are definitely obscure by comparison.

University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye, who has been independently analyzing methane from the Gulf of Mexico, also agrees with me. She said,

“It would take a superhuman microbe to do what they are claiming.”

So it has, Samantha. It was specifically engineered and its “superhuman” genetics were created synthetically.

In a January 7, 2011 article, the UK Register wrote how the scientists were particularly

“surprised at the speed with which the bacteria consumed their enormous meal”.

They also brought up the fact that earlier studies elsewhere in the world suggested methane levels around Deepwater Horizon would be well above normal for years ahead. It’s remarkable what highly engineered designer genes can do.

On January 6, 2011, the Christian Science Monitor reported how the study’s leaders boldly stated that rates of methane decomposition after the Gulf oil spill

“were faster than had ever been recorded in any other place on the planet.”

That’s because these are not natural microbes. You can’t compare apples to grapefruit.

TRACE ELEMENTS ADDED TO THE GULF

In the same CS Monitor report, University of Georgia microbiologist Samantha Joye stated how

“[The Gulf] is not well stocked with trace elements the bacteria need to survive – among them, copper, which bacteria specifically use to deal with the methane. Shortages of copper, as well as other trace elements, likely would have slammed the brakes on the exponential growth in bacterial populations needed to get rid of the methane in fewer than four months.”

The same applies to hydrocarbon-eating bacteria that consume oil, except that iron is needed more than the other trace elements. Since copper and iron are not prevalent mineral elements normally found in the Gulf of Mexico, the synthetic bacterium eating both the oil and the methane would not be able to do so at the remarkable speed they have without such essential earth elements. The only possible way these synthetic bacterium could have done this is by adding the required elements to the Gulf. Spraying a highly dissolved or colloidal mixture of trace elements onto and into the Gulf of Mexico would be absolutely required to accomplish this.

In our October 21, 2010 research article The Gulf BLUE PLAGUE (BP): It’s Not Wise To Fool Mother Nature, we had revealed the abnormally high amounts of elements found in the Gulf and that it was being sprayed along with or separately from the oil dispersants. In August 2010, rain water samples were tested by the Coastal Heritage Society of Louisiana where rain coming directly from the Gulf had unusually high concentrations of iron, copper, nickel, aluminum, manganese, and arsenic.

Without a doubt, the synthetically created bacterium introduced into the Gulf of Mexico to consume the oil and gasses were – and continue to be – fed these essential trace elements. Otherwise, they could not have thrived or reproduced at the accelerated rate they have. The continued spraying in the Gulf by aircraft and by boat is not Corexit or other oil dispersal chemicals. Consider the current spraying to have the same effect of adding liquid fertilizer to your crops.

SYNTHETIC MICROBES MUTATING NATURAL MICROORGANISMS

In early December, 2010 the research vessel WeatherBird II, owned by the University of Southern Florida (USF), went back to the Gulf of Mexico for follow-up water and core samples. As reported by Naomi Klein on January 13, 2011 in Hunting the Ocean for BP’s Missing Millions of Barrels of Oil,

“…these veteran scientists have seen things that they describe as unprecedented …evidence of bizarre sickness in the phytoplankton and bacterial communities…”

This “bizarre sickness” in the indigenous Gulf microorganisms is the direct result of the synthetic microbes that are still creating genetic sicknesses by mutating the DNA of the natural microbes. We had alerted our readers to this in DNA Mutations Confirmed in Gulf of Mexico on September 28, 2010 when we stated,

“DNA mutations are occurring within the Gulf of Mexico at a microscopic cellular level. The obvious effect this has on marine life as well as humans is a Pandora Box of unknowns.”

Tampa Bay Online gave further insight to this in an interview with Dr. John Paul, an oceanography biology professor at USF, regarding the oil plume they had discovered 40 miles off the Florida Panhandle:

It was found to be toxic to microscopic sea organisms, causing mutations to their DNA. If this plankton at the base of the marine food chain is contaminated, it could affect the whole ecosystem of the Gulf.

“The problem with mutant DNA is that it can be passed on and we don’t how this will affect fish or other marine life,” he says, adding that the effects could last for decades.

In Naomi Klein’s article, she describes how Paul introduced healthy bacteria and phytoplankton to Gulf water samples and what happened shocked him. The responses of the organisms “were genotoxic or mutagenic”. According to Paul, what was so “scary” about these results is that such genetic damage was “heritable,” meaning the mutations can be passed on.

Genotoxins pass on genetic changes to successors who have never been exposed to the original gene. Healthy microorganisms are then genetically changed and will pass on their DNA mutations to their descendants. This is a genetic chain-reaction as each mutated microbe interacts with and affects other microorganisms, especially with regards to the food chain:

“…the phytoplankton, the bacteria, and the [microorganisms] that graze on them – the zooplankton – seem to be the most potentially impacted.” – Dr. David Hollander, USF Marine Geochemist: December 6, 2010: Video interview on WeatherBird II.

THE PERFECT GENETIC STORM

In a Bridging The Gap radio interview with Dr. John Waterman on September 9, 2010, he stated,

“Microbes can morph, they can change. Viruses can turn into bacteria and bacteria can turn into fungi. In the Gulf we have bacteria that can morph. It can morph [mutate] because it’s attacked by a virus. The virus can change the genetics of the bacteria so that it morphs [mutates] into something very deadly.

Some of these changed bacteria can become deadly, Ebola deadly. When you have a morphed bacterium that gets airborne, now you’re going to see it go from person to person.

We’re on the verge of something that can become a deadly pandemic. They had to know that was the case. All it has to do is enter the human host… and once it gets started, it’s going to be impossible to stop.”

In October, 2010, I was contacted by Riki Ott, PhD who had written a book on the effects of the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska. Her Master’s Science degree is in marine biology with emphasis on the effects oil has on zooplankton. She had just read my It’s Not Wise To Fool Mother Nature article and wanted to talk. So far, she is the only U.S. based scientist who has agreed with me that there were genetically bio-engineered bacteria eating the oil in the Gulf.

In an article she published while in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, entitled Bio-Remediation or Bio-Hazard? Dispersants, Bacteria & Illness in the Gulf, she recounts how comments made by a local grandmother made her re-evaluate her thoughts on crude oil bio-remediation. That grandmother said she felt the oil-eating bacteria were “running amok and causing skin rashes”. Here’s part of what Dr. Ott wrote:

“To make things a little scarier, some of the oil-eating bacteria have been genetically modified, or otherwise bio-engineered, to better eat the oil – including Alcanivorax borkumensis and some of the Pseudomonas.”

Pseudomonas alcaligenes is a Gram-negative aerobic bacterium used for bio-remediation purposes because it can degrade aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene or methane. Alcanivorax borkumensis is also a Gram-negative bacterium used for bio-remediation purposes because it can degrade oil hydrocarbons. There we have it. Confirmation once again that synthetic designer genes are the reason the oil and gas are being eaten up at alarming rates within the Gulf.

But why are these Gram-negative bacteria so important? Because, as Riki Ott said,

“Oil-eating bacteria produce bio-films. Studies have found that bio-films are rapidly colonized by other Gram-negative bacteria – including those known to infect humans.”

A nurse Riki Ott was working with in the Gulf, Nurse Schmidt, put it this way:

“This is like a major bacterial storm. It could be the reason we are seeing a variance of symptoms in different individuals. In some people, we see respiratory complications, while in others we see skin or GI symptoms. I think it is due to a multitude of colonized bacteria.”

But this is not just a typical bacterial storm. In this instance, there are synthetically created bio-remediation bacteria that have mutated untold species of natural organisms in the Gulf water and in the air. As different colonies begin to grow and colonize, you are witnessing the perfect genetic storm.

SYNTHETIC DNA CREATED THE GULF BLUE PLAGUE

I’ve written numerous articles in various forums since July, 2010 trying my best to warn not only my own family and friends, but the entire world with what has been evolving in the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve described in detail precisely how it was and is still evolving. For the record, I’ve researched and published these findings in the World Vision Portal forum, WVP’s YouTube channel, in the Blue Plague blog, and in weekly radio broadcasts on the Living Light Network. In August, I appropriately named the ensuing pandemic The Gulf Blue Plague.

To my frustration, few have cared to listen. I’ve been ignored and shunned on most internet sites owned and controlled by those who purportedly claim to be representing those of us living along the Gulf coast. Many of them simply don’t represent us at all. They exist for their own agendas, such as to find clients for their attorney practices. Some have exploited Gulf victims to only make a name for themselves. Some simply disappeared when BP and government agencies said the Gulf oil disaster was finished. The truth of the matter is that it’s not finished in the least. The worst part is yet to come this spring and summer as the warmer water and air accelerates the growth of the synthetically mutated viruses and bacteria.

What’s taking place in the Gulf of Mexico is not a regional problem just for those of us who live here. It’s a worldwide problem. Subtle viral and bacterial signs are beginning to show up everywhere. Mysterious unexplained diseases affecting fish, sea mammals, animals, fowl, trees, plants and mankind are occurring because of the synthetic genomes that are changing and mutating the natural organisms in the oceans and in the air.

I’ve been constantly interviewing both family members and friends who are physicians, scientists, Registered Nurses, ship captains, shrimpers, and fishermen. All of them agree that the scientifically confirmed mutated organisms – directly caused by synthetically engineered genomes interjected into the Gulf – can and most assuredly will become a pandemic or even multiple pandemics. As my RN friend with over 30 years of trauma and clinical experience in Louisiana put it,

“This is like an opera where the main characters are Frankenstein and King Neptune. When the fat lady of the Gulf finally sings in the last act, there may not be much of an audience left to hear her.”

In summary, all I can say is what I’ve been saying for months now….
“Wherever the Gulf wind blows and the Gulf water flows”


http://worldvisionportal.org/wordpress/ ... tic-storm/

NOTES & ADDENDUM

From The Gulf Blue Plague is Evolving – Part II

VIRUSES

Bacteriophages are viruses that change the DNA of bacteria. Many types of bacteriophages exist. Some simply infect the host bacteria while others insert into and alter the bacterial chromosome.

Some of the viruses donate their DNA materials to the host cell and cause alteration in the genetic code. Some bacteriophages can enter the host cell, but instead of immediately making new viral material the bacteriophages DNA will integrate into the chromosome of the bacteria.

BACTERIA

Bacteria are a large group of single cell microorganisms that grow to a fixed size and then reproduce through a form of asexual reproduction. Under optimal conditions, bacteria can grow and divide rapidly and some bacterial populations can double as quickly as every 9.8 minutes. Most bacteria have a single circular chromosome and inherit identical copies of their parent’s genes (they clone themselves).

However, all bacteria can evolve through changes made to their genetic material DNA caused by mutations. Mutations come from errors made during the replication of DNA or from exposure to mutagens (mutating agents), such as certain chemicals or bacteriophages (viruses). Mutations are changes in the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. It can occur at both a Gene level – called a Gene Mutation – and at a Chromosome level – called a Chromosome Mutation. This process of change is called Mutagenesis. The result is a mutated virus that quickly duplicates itself, develops into maturity, and then discharges itself into the environment. A water environment discharge will become airborne due to high temperatures or as a result of storms.

Despite their apparent simplicity, bacteria can also form complex associations with other organisms. If bacteria form a parasitic association, they are classed as pathogens. Pathogenic bacteria are a major cause of human death and disease. MRSA and other flesh eating bacterium are pathogenic.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby Laodicean » Thu Jan 27, 2011 4:02 am

Gulf human rights hero Thomas B. Manton falsely imprisoned, murdered

Wednesday, January 26, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Former President and CEO of the International Oil Spill Control Corporation, Dr. Thomas B. Manton heroically fought to expose the truth about the massive Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, which was caused by a BP oil platform explosion in April 2010. However, all of his hard work resulted in his false imprisonment and subsequent murder, an all-too-common scenario among whistle blowers who expose lies and corruption.

Dr. Manton was one of the first to warn the public that far more oil than what BP had reported was gushing into the Gulf every single day, and that, eventually, the massive oil-and-chemical plumes would wrap their way around the Gulf and travel up the eastern seaboard, contaminating beaches and wildlife all along the way. Manton also warned that the worst is yet to come within the next few years as the toxic brew slowly makes its way throughout the environment.

"Once the winds change, it will then come eastward and pollute the beaches of the west coast of Florida and the "loop current" could carry this oil spill right around Florida, through the Florida Keys and pollute the east coast of Florida as well," Manton wrote on May 28, 2010.

Unlike most others, Manton was not about to let BP or the U.S. government get away with hiding the facts about the spill, facts that include a growing list of human deaths from exposure to both the oil and the Corexit chemicals used to mitigate it. And this is precisely why people like Dr. Tom Termotto, National Coordinator of the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference, say that Manton was deliberately framed and murdered.

"[Manton] was particularly distressed that the U.S. Federal Government allowed BP to completely take charge of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster area, as his experience taught him that the offending oil company should never be given command over the oil spill response," said Termotto, speaking of Manton's extensive history in dealing with oil spills. And when Manton was first arrested, Termotto explained that "Dr. Manton was serving an unlawful 15-year prison sentence, convicted of a crime he did not commit."

An August 8, 2010, report in the Keechobee News explains that Manton was found guilty on one count of possession of child pornography. However, some sources claim the offending material was planted on Manton's computer in order to set him up. Either way, Florida's criminal justice system oddly placed Manton into a regular prison, where eventually he was murdered by other inmates for the heinous nature of his supposed crimes.

"[Manton] was railroaded through the criminal justice process with such speed, force and determination -- after the BP Oil Spill received so much national and global attention -- that many of us could only come to certain disturbing conclusions," said Termotto. "His sentence, given all the extenuating circumstances, exceptional disregard of various criteria, and flouting of sentencing guidelines, was unprecedented in Florida history."

And Manton is not the only Gulf whistle blower to have been targeted for silencing. In August 2010, Matthew Simmons, another leading whistle blower in the BP oil scandal, was found dead in his Maine home. Some reports say he accidentally drowned in his hot tub, while others say he died of a heart attack. Many believe Simmons death was also a set up because of his outspoken opposition to what he regularly said was a massive BP coverup.

According to Simmons, BP did not respond to the disaster properly, and afterwords tried to lie about it. Simmons also accused the mainstream media of being a BP accomplice, conveniently cooperating with its efforts to dupe the public into thinking everything was under control when it really was not. Like Manton, Simmons also warned that human health would be greatly affected by the disaster in years to come.

What makes both deaths perhaps the most highly suspicious is the mainstream media's treatment of both situations. Both men were very outspoken and received significant media attention during the time of the disaster. But upon his death, Simmons received scant and conflicting reports about the cause of his death. And Manton's death has yet to even receive any media attention.


http://www.naturalnews.com/031115_Thoma ... z1CDk7Rzgu
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby No_Baseline » Thu Jan 27, 2011 11:21 am

Laodicean wrote:
Gulf human rights hero Thomas B. Manton falsely imprisoned, murdered

Wednesday, January 26, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Former President and CEO of the International Oil Spill Control Corporation, Dr. Thomas B. Manton heroically fought to expose the truth about the massive Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, which was caused by a BP oil platform explosion in April 2010. However, all of his hard work resulted in his false imprisonment and subsequent murder, an all-too-common scenario among whistle blowers who expose lies and corruption.

Dr. Manton was one of the first to warn the public that far more oil than what BP had reported was gushing into the Gulf every single day, and that, eventually, the massive oil-and-chemical plumes would wrap their way around the Gulf and travel up the eastern seaboard, contaminating beaches and wildlife all along the way. Manton also warned that the worst is yet to come within the next few years as the toxic brew slowly makes its way throughout the environment.

"Once the winds change, it will then come eastward and pollute the beaches of the west coast of Florida and the "loop current" could carry this oil spill right around Florida, through the Florida Keys and pollute the east coast of Florida as well," Manton wrote on May 28, 2010.

Unlike most others, Manton was not about to let BP or the U.S. government get away with hiding the facts about the spill, facts that include a growing list of human deaths from exposure to both the oil and the Corexit chemicals used to mitigate it. And this is precisely why people like Dr. Tom Termotto, National Coordinator of the Gulf Oil Spill Remediation Conference, say that Manton was deliberately framed and murdered.

"[Manton] was particularly distressed that the U.S. Federal Government allowed BP to completely take charge of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster area, as his experience taught him that the offending oil company should never be given command over the oil spill response," said Termotto, speaking of Manton's extensive history in dealing with oil spills. And when Manton was first arrested, Termotto explained that "Dr. Manton was serving an unlawful 15-year prison sentence, convicted of a crime he did not commit."

An August 8, 2010, report in the Keechobee News explains that Manton was found guilty on one count of possession of child pornography. However, some sources claim the offending material was planted on Manton's computer in order to set him up. Either way, Florida's criminal justice system oddly placed Manton into a regular prison, where eventually he was murdered by other inmates for the heinous nature of his supposed crimes.

"[Manton] was railroaded through the criminal justice process with such speed, force and determination -- after the BP Oil Spill received so much national and global attention -- that many of us could only come to certain disturbing conclusions," said Termotto. "His sentence, given all the extenuating circumstances, exceptional disregard of various criteria, and flouting of sentencing guidelines, was unprecedented in Florida history."

And Manton is not the only Gulf whistle blower to have been targeted for silencing. In August 2010, Matthew Simmons, another leading whistle blower in the BP oil scandal, was found dead in his Maine home. Some reports say he accidentally drowned in his hot tub, while others say he died of a heart attack. Many believe Simmons death was also a set up because of his outspoken opposition to what he regularly said was a massive BP coverup.

According to Simmons, BP did not respond to the disaster properly, and afterwords tried to lie about it. Simmons also accused the mainstream media of being a BP accomplice, conveniently cooperating with its efforts to dupe the public into thinking everything was under control when it really was not. Like Manton, Simmons also warned that human health would be greatly affected by the disaster in years to come.

What makes both deaths perhaps the most highly suspicious is the mainstream media's treatment of both situations. Both men were very outspoken and received significant media attention during the time of the disaster. But upon his death, Simmons received scant and conflicting reports about the cause of his death. And Manton's death has yet to even receive any media attention.


http://www.naturalnews.com/031115_Thoma ... z1CDk7Rzgu


I found this link on another board. It seems he was actually arrested in 2007 for 33 counts of child pornography. The newspaper archive wants money for each article looked up, so I was only able to find and post the front page of the newspaper carrying the story.

http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00028410/01646

This Manton is an interesting character though. Here is a bit of his bio:

Thomas B. Manton was born in Burma and grew up in India and Pakistan. He holds a Ph.D. in International Law and Organization and was the biographer of U Thant, the third Secretary General of the United Nations. From 1967 to 1972, Manton led the battle to change U.S. China policy and get China into the United Nations. He currently resides in Kirkland.

And an article he wrote: (while apparently also the CEO of the spill control corp - busy guy)

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/s ... ient=opera

1979 is when he became President of the International Spill Control Corporation, serving members of OPEC.

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voi ... atastrophe

I'm not sure what to make of all the information. The guy was connected, yet couldn't shake the child pornography charge. Very interesting.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby DoYouEverWonder » Fri Feb 04, 2011 9:43 pm

Oil spill compensation claims could soar over lawyer's links to BP

Judge's ruling could mean thousands will head straight to court

4 February 2011

BP's attempts to quantify and quickly resolve billions of dollars in compensation claims from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been undercut by a ruling in a Louisiana court, which questioned the independence of the $20bn claims fund established by the British oil giant last year.

Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer in charge of the fund, cannot claim to be neutral, a judge said, and is in fact acting in BP's interests.

The ruling throws open the possibility that thousands of people who suffered personal injury or lost their livelihoods as a result of the worst-ever oil spill might now bypass the claims fund and instead seek redress in the courts.

Analysts fear that protracted court action will dramatically increase the costs of the oil spill for BP, not least because of the legal fees involved. It also promises to prolong the uncertainty over the final bill for the spill. An estimated 5 million barrels of oil spewed into the ocean from a ruptured well for almost three months after a fire sank the Deepwater Horizon rig last April, hitting fishing, oyster farming, tourism and other industries along the Gulf coast.

At the height of the public anger over the spill in June, the White House pressured BP into setting up an independent claims fund, under the aegis of Mr Feinberg, the lawyer who previously oversaw claims to victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. However, Mr Feinberg's fees are paid directly by BP and he has numerous obligations to consult and provide information to the oil giant throughout the process, Judge Carl Barbier said. Mr Feinberg's firm is paid $850,000 [£526,000] a month for its work.

"A full disclosure of the relationship between Mr Feinberg, the claims fund and BP will at least make transparent that it is BP's interests... that are being promoted," the judge ruled.

Lawyers acting for thousands of claimants have been fighting Mr Feinberg's assertion that people would be better off seeking redress through his fund. They want as many as possible to join a class action against BP in the Louisiana courts.

"Today is a good day for the thousands of victims of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy," said Jim Roy, a lawyer for oil spill victims. "With this ruling, the court is protecting the rights of the thousands of victims of this preventable tragedy, and has unequivocally stated that Mr Feinberg no longer has carte blanche to mislead the public on BP's behalf."

BP's latest estimate of the costs of the spill at $41bn, including compensation for victims and the bill for fixing the well and cleaning up the oil. Earlier this week it reinstated the dividend for shareholders, after having axed it in the wake of the spill. It is trying to recoup many billions of dollars of the costs from its business partners, including other investors in the Deepwater Horizon project and its sub-contractors on the rig.

Mr Feinberg, meanwhile, has so far disbursed $3.5bn in compensation. Speaking before the Louisiana court ruling on Wednesday, he said he expected the Gulf coast to have fully recovered from the disaster within the next two or three years.

Local residents and politicians have rounded on Mr Feinberg, saying it is unfair claimants must waive their right to sue BP if they accept a claims fund settlement, and charging Mr Feinberg with underestimating the scale of the economic damage.

Mr Feinberg said he had "canvassed the universe" to reach a scientific consensus on the speed of recovery from the spill. "If people feel that I have misread the available data or have underestimated the long term data don't take the final payment," he said.

Who is Kenneth Feinberg?

Massachusetts-born Kenneth Feinberg considered a career in acting before studying law in New York in the 1960s. He now boasts an illustrious CV.

After a stint as Senator Ted Kennedy's Chief of Staff in the late 1970s, Mr Feinberg started his own law firm (now called Feinberg Rozen LLP).

Dubbed America's "compensation tsar", he is best known for handling the $180m (£110m) settlement between the manufacturers of Agent Orange and Vietnam veterans, the $7bn federal compensation fund for victims of 9/11 and the memorial fund for the families of victims of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

In 2010, it was no surprise when President Obama named Mr Feinberg independent administrator of the $20bn compensation fund set up by BP for victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/oil-spill-compensation-claims-could-soar-over-lawyers-links-to-bp-2203847.html
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby justdrew » Mon Feb 14, 2011 8:30 pm

not a surprise at all, but worth pointing out...
personally, I've quit all seafood (not that I ever ate much (flax seed oil :) )

Exclusive: Multiple independent lab tests confirm oil in Gulf shrimp

By Stephen C. Webster
November 10, 2010 @ 8:09 am

Experts operating states apart confirm toxic content in not just shrimp, but crab and fish too

The federal government is going out of its way to assure the public that seafood pulled from recently reopened Gulf of Mexico waters is safe to consume, in spite of the largest accidental release of crude oil in America's history.

However, testing methodologies used by the government to deem areas of water safe for commercial fishing are woefully inadequate and permit high levels of toxic compounds to slip into the human food chain, according to a series of scientific and medical professionals interviewed by Raw Story.

In two separate cases, a toxicologist and a chemist independently confirmed their seafood samples contained unusually high volumes of crude oil and harmful hydrocarbons -- and some of this food was allegedly being sent to market.

One test, conducted by a chemist from Mobile, Alabama, employed a rudimentary chemical analysis of shrimp pulled from waters near Louisiana and found "oil and grease" in their digestive tracts.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) tests, which are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have focused on the animal's flesh, with samples shelled and cleaned before undergoing examination.

Unfortunately, many Gulf coast residents prepare shrimp whole, tossing the creatures into boiling water shells and all.

"I wouldn't eat shrimp, fish or crab caught in the Gulf," said Robert M. Naman, a chemist at ACT Labs in Mobile, Alabama, who conducted the test after being contacted by a New Orleans activist. "The problems people will face, health-wise, are something that people don't understand."

Naman also found that the oil was at an unusual high concentration: 193 parts-per-million (PPM).

Though Naman's test did not provide a complete fingerprint of the chemical spectrum, his results are still "an important finding," according to Dr. Susan Shaw, a marine toxicologist at the Marine Environmental Research Institute in Blue Hill, Maine.

"193 parts-per-million of petroleum in a crustacean is very high," she told Raw Story. "You have to ask, what is the meaning from a human health perspective?

"This is another signal that oil is in the food chain in the Gulf. Oil has been found in subsea plumes, in seafloor sediments, where it will degrade very slowly and can be re-released into the food chain."

Tainted seafood allegedly headed to market

In another series of tests, Dr. William Sawyer, of the Sanibel, Florida-based Toxicology Consultants & Assessment Specialists, replicated findings of oil in shrimp digestive tracts, but he noted an even higher content of harmful hydrocarbons in the flesh of other edible creatures.

And, Dr. Sawyer said, some of his test samples came from seafood on its way to market, pulled from waters recently classified as safe for commercial fishing activities.

"They did not test the [total petroleum hydrocarbons] (TPH) in their samples," he said, calling his testing methodologies a much more comprehensive way of examining compounds present in seafood.

"The sensory test employed by the FDA detects compounds that are volatile that have an odor; we're detecting compounds that are low volatility and are very low odor," he added. "We found not only petroleum in the digestive tracts [of shrimp], but also in the edible portions of fish.

"We've collected shrimp, oysters and finned fish on their way to marketplace -- we tested a good number of seafood samples and in 100 percent we found petroleum."

The FDA says up to 100-PPM of oil and dispersant residue is safe to consume in finned fish, and 500-PPM is allowed for shellfish.

Dr. Sawyer, who has long been a vocal critic of these rules, called the government's tests "little more than a farce."

"[The FDA's safety threshold] is borderline absurd," Naman added. "It's geared so that shrimpers can go back to work, and that's great -- but if we're talking about human health and the environment, you need to proceed slowly."

The FDA ignored multiple requests for comment on this story.

Long-term health effects still unknown

Direct exposure to crude oil can cause a number of health issues for humans, but most of them are short-lived or relative and none of the potential long-term effects are guaranteed.

While the full array of effects are still being studied and debated by the medical community, crude oil does contain benzene, which can cause cancer, along with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), which are toxic to the brain and nervous system.

The latter has been found in virtually all NOAA samples of Gulf seafood, but very few samples exceeded the maximum allowable levels set by federal safety regulators. Even so, according to Dr. Sawyer [1], PAH levels detected by the NOAA in Gulf region shrimp were almost always 10 times that of levels found in shrimp farmed inland.

The FDA recently declared that out of 1,735 samples of Gulf seafood tested from June through Sept., only 13 showed levels of residues above its allowable threshold.

It is unclear whether regular consumption of this content of oil would sicken a person, how quickly its symptoms would begin to show, or in what ways they would manifest.

The initial effects of oil toxicity from ingestion include headaches, nausea, fatigue and rapid changes in mental state, according to Dr. Cyrus Rangan, assistant director of the California Poison Control System, who spoke to The Los Angeles Times in June [2].

Those changes in mental state may actually be the most damaging lasting effect of the BP oil spill, according to Dr. Russell W. H. Kridel, a member of the American Medical Association (AMA) Council on Science and Public Health.

Kridel, whose specialty is actually in plastic surgery and ear-nose-and-throat disorders, spoke to Raw Story because the AMA's council has prepared a comprehensive report on the health effects of the BP oil spill.

"Most of the problems encountered [along the Gulf coast] were more mental health problems than anything else," he said. "There are respiratory health problems just from burning oil. You can get rashes from skin contact, headaches, vomiting or nausea, which has affected a lot of relief workers.

"There's a lot of chronic stress and mental health disorders too, and those last longer than the acute, short-term effects. We cannot really tell you the long-term effects, just because of lack of long-term studies."

He added that while he could not comment on evidence of oil in the digestive tracts of shrimp, some marine life have consumed oil content for centuries due to natural seepage near fault lines thought to account for over 600,000 metric tonnes of oil released across all the world's oceans every year.

By comparison, scientists with the US Geological Survey and US Department of Energy estimate BP spilled at or near 4.9 million barrels -- or approximately 666,400 metric tonnes of crude.

"[Most other oil spills] don't show any long term effects on the local populations, but the size of previous oil spills are not this large," he said. "This was the largest oil disaster in US history so I really can't say what the full effect will be."

Yet still, "no group has issued a warning or concern that it could affect human health by eating seafood," Dr. Kridel emphasized.

The AMA has been active in coordinating efforts to track the health effects of BP's oil spill. A report, recently passed by the group's house of delegates, committed the AMA to continued monitoring of spill-related health effects.

Risk-factors remain

Despite declaring safety, even the NOAA's own tests show regular consumption of Gulf seafood will dramatically heighten one's intake of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

This, combined with a lack of testing for total petroleum hydrocarbons -- and questions as to whether samples were in great enough number [3] to declare wide swaths of water safe for fishing -- should be enough to convince any skeptical eater to avoid Gulf seafood for the time being.

"I'm not eating fish. I wouldn't advise anyone to eat fish," chemist Robert Naman insisted. "[The government is] more worried about livelihoods and tourism, but I'm ultimately more concerned with human health."

Dr. Sawyer agreed: "I don't recommend eating Gulf seafood, not with the risk of liver and kidney damage," he said. "The reason FDA has not made that advisory is because they've relied on this sensory test. You may as well send inspectors out to look at the fish and say they look nice. They're sniffing for something they can't detect."

Because of the unknown nature of the threat posed, chemically sensitive populations like women, children, the elderly and people with depressed immune function or existing illness would be especially well advised to exercise caution when choosing seafood.

"Once oil enters, it can damage every organ, every system in the body," Dr. Shaw concluded. "There is no safe level of exposure to this oil, because it contains carcinogens, mutagens that can damage DNA and cause cancer and other chronic health problems. Many people in the Gulf have been exposed for months -- not just workers but residents. There are hundreds of health complaints from local people with symptoms that resemble symptoms of oil exposure.

"It will be years, possibly decades, before we understand the extent and nature of the health effects caused by this spill."

URL to article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/10/a ... lf-shrimp/

URLs in this post:

[1] according to Dr. Sawyer: http://www.gulfoildisasterrecovery.com/ ... 12-102.pdf

[2] who spoke to The Los Angeles Times in June: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greensp ... spill.html

[3] whether samples were in great enough number: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/gove ... cientists/
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby Laodicean » Tue Feb 22, 2011 3:37 pm

Spike Reported in Number of Stillborn Dolphins on Coast

by Karen Nelson

GULFPORT -- Baby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama shorelines at about 10 times the normal number for the first two months of the year, researchers are finding.

Seventeen young dolphins, either aborted before they reached maturity or dead soon after birth, have been collected on the coasts of the states in the past two weeks, both on the barrier islands and mainland beaches.

This is the first birthing season for dolphins since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico; however, Moby Solangi, director of the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, said it’s too early to tell why they died.

“For some reason, they’ve started aborting or they were dead before they were born,” Solangi said. “The average is one or two a month. This year we have 17 and February isn’t even over yet.”

It’s the most that Solangi has seen in the two states and he’s been watching the Gulf for 30 years, recording dolphin data in Mississippi for 20. The institute has collected 13 infant dolphins in the last two weeks and three more on Monday along the Gulfport and Horn Island beaches.

Bill Walker, head of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources said his teams will work with the institute to collect the bodies of infant dolphins on Horn Island.

“Something is amiss,” Walker said Monday. “It could be oil-related. Who knows? Some of these mothers were probably exposed to oil. Whether it rendered them unable to carry their calves, we just don’t know.”

Early in the season

When a dolphin is born, its mother has the job of making sure it gets to the surface for its first breath of air.

If the baby is dead, the mother still tries. Over and over, sometimes for hours. She stays with the baby, not realizing fully that it is dead. She will hit it with her tail, grasp it, pull it and nudge it gently, hoping to get it to breathe.

“The more desperate the animal gets when the calf is not breathing, the more intense her behavior becomes,” Solangi said. “I’ve watched it.”

She goes into a frenzy trying to get the baby to respond and then stays with her dead infant, sometimes for hours before she lets it go.

That’s why some of the dead dolphin infants identified in the last two weeks have trauma to their bodies, he said.

“They didn’t die by being hit,” Solangi said.

The institute performed necropsies, animal autopsies, on two of them Monday and have data collected from the other bodies in the past two weeks.

Solangi called the high number of deaths an anomaly and told the Sun Herald that it is significant, especially in light of the BP oil spill throughout the spring and summer last year when millions of barrels of crude oil containing toxins and carcinogens spewed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Oil worked its way into the Mississippi and Chandeleur sounds and other bays and shallow waters where dolphins breed and give birth.

Dolphins breed in the spring and carry their young for 11 to 12 months, Solangi said.

Typically in January and February, there are one or two baby dolphins per month found dead in Mississippi and Alabama, then the birthing season goes into full swing in March.

Deaths for the adult dolphin population in the area rose in the year of the oil spill from a norm of about 30 to 89, Solangi said.

Solangi is gathering tissue and organs for a thorough forensic study of the deaths and is cautious about drawing conclusions until the data from the research is in, probably within a couple of weeks.

No trend has emerged from the autopsies.

“But this is more than just a coincidence,” he said.

Another coast

Heidi Whitehead, state coordinator for the Texas Marine Mammal Stranding Network said numbers like the ones in Mississippi and Alabama would be considered normal for the Texas coast.

In 2007 or 2008, she said, they had an “unusual mortality event” when as many as 50 neonates washed ashore in two weeks. Some were ill and some were abandoned stillborn, but many were too decomposed to find the cause of death.

Whitehead said that in Texas now, no deaths, as far as they could detect, have been related to the oil spill this year and the numbers of deaths have been well within the normal range.


http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/02/22-6
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby Nordic » Sun Mar 06, 2011 4:53 am

http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/shock ... als-photos

Pensacola Beach: “1,000′s of dead animals” & brown sand as far as the eye can see (PHOTOS)


March 5th, 2011 at 08:44 PM

1,000's of dead animals today washing ashore as new oil rises in Pensacola Florida. For those of you that live on Cape Cod, Washington DC, or any other part of the Country don't think you are not going to be affected by this. Have you heard of the Gulf Stream???? This is just the result of the first stormy day in the Gulf with all the "out of sight, out of mind" submerged-dispersed oil. THERE ARE NO MAGIC MICROBES!!!!!




Looking pretty nasty ......

This thing is gonna be with us for a very long time.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby Peachtree Pam » Mon Mar 07, 2011 3:47 am

Via Florida Oil Spil Law



http://www.tribtoday.com/page/content.d ... l?nav=5021

910th Airlift Wing receives Air Force award

VIENNA - The 910th Airlift Wing in Vienna is being honored among the Air Force's elite for its help with cleanup after last year's Gulf oil spill, the Air Force Reserve Command announced Friday.

The 910th is being honored with the ''Air Force Outstanding Unit Award'' recognizing the airlift wing for outstanding achievement from April 28 to June 4, 2010, when it sent two specially equipped C-130H aircraft and the associated personnel and support crew to Stennis International Airport in Mississippi to aid in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup efforts.

While they were deployed to the Gulf Coast, the aircrews flew 92 sorties and sprayed 30,000 acres with nearly 149,000 gallons of dispersant.

Maj. Brent Davis, head of public relations at the base, said the last time the unit received the award was 13 years ago. Davis said the award typically is given for service over a period of time. He said it is an honor to win it for a specific mission.

''It's something that just doesn't happen,'' Davis said.


Davis said more than 80 reservists made the trip during the mission, but lots more helped out, from the people who loaded the planes at the airbase in Vienna to those in the base's financial section who handled the paperwork concerning pay, and even private contractors who lent their expertise, as well.

''There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff,'' Davis said.

Col. Fritz Linsenmeyer, commander of the 910th Airlift Wing, said the Deepwater Horizon mission was the first time the Department of Defense used the oil dispersing capability of the 910th. He said the 910th Airlift Wing is the Department of Defense's only fixed-wing aerial spray capable unit.

''Our airmen have been training for this type of response and we are pleased to have been able to utilize their skills and capabilities to help make a difference,'' Linsenmeyer said.

He said he was proud of the Wing receiving the award as this was a team effort. ''All our reserve, civilian, and contractor personnel actively contributed to this exceptional achievement,'' Linsenmeyer said.

Davis said the award shows just how much dedication the reservists put into their jobs.
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Re: 'Not for public': the oil spill may be getting much wors

Postby Jeff » Sat Mar 19, 2011 8:40 pm

Rocky Kistner
Media associate, NRDC
Posted: March 19, 2011 05:18 PM

Oil Spill Reported Near Deepwater Drilling Site in Gulf

The Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially large oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico not far from the Deepwater Horizon site. According to a knowledgeable source, the slick was sighted by a helicopter pilot on Friday and is about 100 miles long. A fishing boat captain said he went through the slick yesterday and it was strong enough to make his eyes burn.

According to the Times Picayune, the Coast Guard has confirmed they are investigating a potentially large 100 mile slick about 30 miles offshore. They are going to a site near the Matterhorn well site about 20 miles north of the BP Deepwater Horizon site, according to the paper. The Matterhorn field includes includes a deepwater drilling platform owned by W&T Technology. It was acquired last year from TotalFinaElf E&P.

Independent pilots are attempting to reach the slick today. Bonnie Schumaker with Wings of Care reported she saw a slick two days ago and is attempting to reach the site.

Also, another Louisiana fisherman reports that fresh oil is coming ashore near South Pass, LA, and that cleanup crews are laying new boom near the beach. He also reports that cleanup crews in four-wheeled vehicles were patrolling the beaches near the marsh filled coast spraying a substance on the beach.

...


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rocky-kis ... 38019.html
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