Just returned from a week in Santa Monica at the beach with my family. Lovely, relaxing, a few surreal moments–watching kids romp in the surf while planes with banners flew by selling bank accounts, beer and clothes. Odd juxtaposition against the continuing horror along the Gulf coast and stories on the net about the demise of the oceans and the collapse of atmosphere. Awesome ferris wheel on the boardwalk though:
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Could have watched that thing go round and round all night. Serious blogging to return soon, in the meantime here is a newly invented recipe via my son, who is fearless in the kitchen:
Place a tortilla flat and add the following:
Grated monterey jack
Slices of mango
Basil and Oregano (preferably fresh)
Grill or broil until cheese melts. Fold. eat.
And here is my variation:
Take 2 slices of bread and spread with hummous. Add mango slices, avocado and tomato. Eat.
Currently we are working with roasted sweet potatoes. Stay tuned.
A few years ago we spent a long weekend at a lovely hotel on the pristine St. Petersburg, FL shore. We walked along the beach, collected shells, ate seafood. Yesterday I got an email from them telling me they weren’t Pensacola and to come on down, the water’s fine. They even have their own no-spill-here -cam.
“Public officials have failed to sound an alarm about the public health threat because three federal agencies – DHHS, EPA, and OSHA – cannot find any unsafe levels of oil in air or water. Perhaps the federal air and water standards are not stringent enough to protect the public from oil pollution. Our federal laws are outdated and do not protect us from the toxic threat from oil – now widely recognized in the scientific and medical community.
BP is still in the dark ages on oil toxicity. BP officials stress that, by the time oil gets to shore, it is “weathered”
After wading in 'safe' water...
and missing the highly volatile compounds like the carcinogenic benzene, among others. BP fails to mention the threat from dispersed oil, ultrafine particles (PAHs), and chemical dispersants, which include industrial solvents and proprietary compounds, many hazardous to humans.
If oil was so nontoxic, then why are the spill response workers giving hazardous waste training? Our federal government should stop pretending that everything is okay. What isn’t safe for workers isn’t safe for the general public either.”
It bears remembering as well that the monitoring that is being done of air and water quality is not up to elementary school science standards in some regards. NRDC’s Gina Solomon points to sample results that, “don’t say where they were taken, and who was in the area.”
Questions have also been raised about testing labs with ties to BP and the veracity of assertions that dispersants are not in the air and increased arsenic levels. And then there is the matter of report after report of reporters being denied access to the effected areas. Bottom line–between deliberate misinformation, denial of access to information and an approach to scientific fact checking that is less sophisticated than a kid’s chemistry set, assurances of safety along the Gulf are suspect at best.
But that is not even the most dangerous part of the story. As I pointed out a few weeks ago, the oil disaster, first framed by BP, the government and media as a regrettable spill, quickly escalated into a war that needed to be fought. As Anne McClintock writes,
“Billy Nungesser, indefatigable President of the Plaquemines Parish, implores anyone who will listen: “We will fight this war….We will persevere to win this war.” For Ragin Cajun, Democratic strategist, James Carville: “This is literally a war… this is an invasion…We need to hear someone say ‘We’ll fight them on the beaches.’” Retired Gen. Russell Honore, who oversaw the Katrina debacle, insists: “We need to act like this is World War 111. Treat this like it’s an invasion…equal to what we decided about terrorists. We’ve got to find the oil and kill it.”…
…Visit the BP site (one of the more surreal Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass internet experiences) and you will see the word “kill”–BP’s favored, faux-techno buzzword–appearing with ritualistic incantation. Kill the well, kill the leak, kill the oil, which morphs into “kill mud” (the mud that will kill the leak) and “kill lines” (the lines that follow the pipes to kill the leak)..
…So why are people calling the calamity a war and why does it matter that they do?
Calling the oil the ‘enemy’ helps us not to question who was culpable in the first place. Calling the response ‘a battle front’ helps us not ask who, other than the military, should be in charge. Calling the spill an ‘invasion’ helps us not to see that our global culture of militarization is what got us into the mess in the first place. Calling the spill a ‘war’ only fuels the pervasive militarization that produced the crisis in the first place. And calling the oil the enemy helps us not admit how much we, the consumers, having awakened the oil from its ancient slumber to fuel our gas-greedy lives, are the most complicit of all…
…All this war talk would be understandable, defensible even, were it not for a fatally circular, feedback loop. BP would not be in the Gulf drilling deeper than it knows how to drill were it not for its uniquely profitable relation with the US military war machine. The United States Department of Defense buys more oil than any other entity on the planet. The protection of overseas oil is now so unquestioned that even Defense Secretary Gates warned against the “creeping militarization” of U.S. foreign policy. And to fuel this militarization, the Pentagon uses 75% of the oil bought by the DOD for its jets, bombers, drones, tanks, and Humvees. And in order to keep buying this oil, the military has to keep protecting our regional oil interests, two thirds of which are now in conflict prone zones. US military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan use a staggering ninety million gallons a month. And to garrison this vast, global gas-station, the DOD keeps expanding, which means buying more oil.
From whom? In 2009, BP was the Pentagon’s largest contractor at $2.2 billion…
…Keeping this in mind, we would do well to remember that militarization is the number one cause of environmental destruction in the world, and that military production facilities, which are exempt from environmental restrictions, are the most ecologically devastated places on earth. We drill, we spill; nature pays the bill.”
GritTV’s Laura Flanders asks some important questions about the connection between the economy, which according to experts such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich is in serious trouble, and the military:
“The US is currently shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs each month. It’s not just in the Ozarks that the recruiters are the only ones with jobs around. The economy shed 125,000 jobs in June. That’s about the number of troops we have left in Iraq…
…We’ve long heard about fighting people over there so we don’t have to do it here. Is the colder truth becoming that we’re sending people over there because we sure can’t employ ’em over here? And we’re scared to death of what unrest might come with a massive return of men and women who’ve served and endured — and who expect something better for their families than starvation wages, and no social services when they get back?”
I think there is a lot of truth to that as well as to the fact that a bad economy makes for fruitful military recruitment when kids can’t get jobs or afford college, why not join the military like that cool recruiter who hangs out at lunch in the cafeteria in that bad-ass uniform is pushing you to do. As McClintock points out, the military is busy defending the oil on which its existence depends. And for that it needs an endless supply of human cannon fodder.
And so we fight pointless wars without end rather than actually defending our citizens or literally, our shores. We allow the real enemy to tell us how to ‘clean’ up the resultant disaster and to control the information flow even while the oil flows unabated, because we are addicted to their product and our Congress has been bought off.
As for the beaches of St. Pete–are they safe? Perhaps. I hope so, but we simply cannot have enough confidence in what passes as data to say so, even if the damage is not visible. What is unquestionably dangerous however is the wholesale usurpation of government oversight by a lawless private corporation and the denial of freedom of the press in covering this story. As damaging as this disaster has already been to the ocean, shoreline and inhabitants of both, it will continue to be more so unless we insist on proper precautions, good science and full transparency. Above all, it is time to take a long overdue, very hard look at just what our military is supposedly defending and why and how, in the end, real security is defined.
In late June, thousands of activists gathered for the second U.S. Social Forum in an all but left for dead city (Detroit, with its beautiful architecture and boarded up buildings)–to march, confer, create, help and collaborate in what was the largest exercise of deep democracy that this country has ever seen. Many of you have asked me to share my thoughts about the USSF, which I attended and participated in and the following are a few thoughts about what what I took away from the experience.
It is impossible to fully describe the social forum process to someone who has not attended such a gathering. It is a participant driven event, in this case with more than a thousand panels and sessions and at least as many organizations and many, many more individuals. The forum is organized with a horizontal structure that promotes the equal value of all participants. The downside of that is a certain amount of peaceful chaos, the upside is collective empowerment. The number of participants has been pegged at 15,000. That seems high to me, but 10,000 would not be a stretch.
Far more importantly and something that absolutely must be stated loudly and clearly, is that perhaps the greatest strength of the forum and what truly makes it both possible and successful, is the diversity of the participants. Starhawk made this eloquently observation about this crucial point,
“Too many times I’ve sat in meetings having the same conversation, over and over again—where are the people of color? The answer is not to go comb the streets, dragging in random people to make our group look more diverse. Nor is it to stop doing what we’re doing, if it’s the work we’re called to. An effective answer involves drawing a bigger circle, like this Forum has done, that includes all of our multiple movements and issues within it as allies, and if we have resources or skills or connections, saying to our brothers and sisters, “We’re on the same mission—how can I be of service to you?””
Perhaps this graphic from a pamphlet called So That We May Soar that was distributed by by Coil LA/Another Politics Is Possible depicts the vision of the USSF best:
I spent most of my time on gender justice issues and had the wonderful opportunity to listen to and share time with a wide cross-section of activists from all over the world. Our time together brought much needed support, feedback and inspiration.
Although I did attend the first USSF in Atlanta, this was the first time that I participated actively in the Peoples Movement Assembly process. As a general rule I’m not particularly
The PMA process
good at long participatory position statement writing and will confess that a good part of my attending the Gender Justice PMA was because I thought that I should and it involved promising myself that if it got to be more than I could deal with, it was okay to leave after the first few hours.
I stayed. What I participated in and witnessed was deep democracy in action, every voice that chose to speak was heard and considered with respect and four and a half amazing hours later, a document that synthesized what had been said resulted and was presented to the closing PMA the following day. Unlike the U.S. Congress, no one had to worry about being re-elected, there was no back-stabbing, pork barrel legislation and certainly no lobbying or corporate contributions. In other words, democracy, the actual kind.
There were the predictable problems of a gathering of that size, don’t ask about the logistics of getting to all the venues or the heat or the bathroom lines, but the organizers, the people who did the very hard work to make this happen deserve major kudos, not just for getting it done, but for showing us all that, despite all the issues we face today, there is a common ground at the intersection of all that matters and it is indeed possible to get there.
There has been much good reporting (albeit not by the MSM) as well as excellent commentary about the USSF, here are a few links:
Perhaps it is all best summed up by this message to the USSF from Leonard Peltier:
“I encourage you to find unity in your various causes, because all of your struggles are linked. Actually, you don’t just find unity, you create it—each of you individually. Create unity within your specific organizations. And between them. Link your efforts and find ways to network and maximize those efforts.
Making change has never been more important. Make the most of every second, for time is growing short, as so many prophecies have foretold. Educate others about the realities you are struggling for and against. Especially focus on educating the young people who will further your efforts tomorrow. Know that your sensibilities are a gift from Creator intended to wake up and shake up the world so that we may improve how we treat the Earth and each other.”
Last week, in an article published by Truthout, I examined the potential for human reproductive harm as a result of the Gulf oil disaster. It was not until this week however that the EPA finally released information regarding what chemicals are in the dispersants, a crucial first step in definitively assessing harm. The manufacturer, Nalco, had claimed that some of the ingredients were trade secrets. But they were happy to explain in general terms on their website what was in the dispersants,
“Corexit contains six primary ingredients. Examples of everyday products with specific ingredients in common with COREXIT 9500 include:
• One ingredient is used as a wetting agent in dry gelatin, beverage mixtures, and fruit juice drinks.
• A second ingredient is used in a brand-name dry skin cream and also in a body shampoo.
• A third ingredient is found in a popular brand of baby bath liquid.
• A fourth ingredient is found extensively in cosmetics and is also used as a surface-active agent and emulsifier for agents used in food contact.
• A fifth ingredient is used by a major supplier of brand name household cleaning products for “soap scum” removal.
• A sixth ingredient is used in hand creams and lotions, odorless paints and stain blockers.”
Really? We drink this stuff and put it on our babies? Must be harmless, right? So why not just tell us the exact ingredients??
Finally however, the public and planetary right to know has triumphed over greed. Two different versions of Corexit have been used. The New York Times provides this description of the two products:
“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 Pajor 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. Nalco had previously declined to identify the third hazardous substance in the 9500 formula, but EPA’s website reveals it to be dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, a detergent and common ingredient in laxatives.”
Memo to self: avoid laxatives at all costs. But seriously, what the heck are those chemicals and what can they do? Tom Philpott has written the most thorough description that I’ve seen thus far:
“We finally know the main two dispersants that BP and the U.S. government are using to treat the ongoing Gulf spill. Both, by their maker’s own admission, have the “potential to bioconcentrate,” and both have “moderate toxicity to early life stages of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks,” according to a study by Exxon, the company that originally developed them. Their use may be the least-bad course, given the importance of minimizing oil’s effect on coastal wetlands. But a little digging into the chemical makeup of these two substances, which are being dumped in vast quantities into the Gulf, reveals that they could potentially do far more harm than good, both to the Gulf and to humans who later eat from it…
…substances that bioconcentrate tend to move from water into fish, where they can do damage to the fish itself, as well as be passed on to predator fish – and on up the food chain, to human eaters…
…And just how toxic is this stuff? The data sheets for both products contain this shocker: “No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product” – meaning testing their safety for humans”…
…According to their data sheets, both 9500 and 9527 are composed of three potentially hazardous substances. They share two in common, organic sulfonic acid salt and propylene glycol. In addition to those two, Corexit 9500 contains something called “Distillates, petroleum, hydrotreated light,” while Corexit 9527 contains 2-Butoxyethanol…
…Petroleum distillates and 2-Butoxyethanol are both solvents; neither are substances you’d excitedly dump into a vibrant ecosytem. According to itsInternational Chemical Scorecard, 2-Butoxyethanol “may be absorbed” by the skin; causes “cough, dizziness, drowsiness, headache, nausea, and weakness” when inhaled; and “abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting” when ingested. For petroleum distillates, the International Chemical Scorecard has similar indications about exposure for humans, and adds this unsettling line: “The substance is harmful to aquatic organisms.””
So we know that the dispersants contain toxic substances. It would seem that at the very least, since we’ve already dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of them into the Gulf, that we–meaning presumably a governmental agency tasked with doing such things–should be rigorously monitoring their impact. Don’t hold your breath, or rather, it might be a good idea if you do. NRDC’s Gina Solomon reports that,
“New BP air testing results were posted.. from April 27 – May 26 for benzene, total hydrocarbons, and 2-Butoxyethanol. There’s still no information about other oil-related air toxic chemicals such as naphthalene or hydrogen sulfide, offshore.
The BP sampling plan focuses only on workers on the large ships, and appears to not include monitoring for the people on the approximately 1,500 small fishing boats helping to clean up the spill. These people are dismissed as of “Reduced Priority”on page 4 of the BP sampling plan.
Nearly 70% (275 out of 399) of offshore air samples had detectable levels of hydrocarbons and nearly 1 in 5 (73 out of 399) had levels greater than 10 parts per million (ppm), which is an EPA cutoff level for further investigation.
6 samples exceed 100 ppm which in a previous monitoring summary was labeled as the action limit. This label appears to have been removed in the most recent summary document. No information is given on where these samples, or the 4 found to be between 50 and 100 ppm, were taken.
20 (5%) samples had detectable levels of benzene with measurements up to 0.5 ppm. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Recommended Exposure Limit (REL) is 0.1 ppm.
20% (29 out of 146) samples had detectable levels of 2-Butoxyethanol with measurements up to 10 ppm. This range encompasses the NIOSH REL for occupational exposure to 2-Butoxyethanol of 5 ppm. The BP document cites the OSHA PEL for 2-Butoxyethanol of 50 ppm, which would not protect workers.”
In other words, it would appear that people working near these chemicals are being at least in some cases exposed to levels that are unacceptable. And those are the priority people, we don’t know about the reduced priority people. (Never mind all those chemicals, let’s just start by forbidding our data collectors from ever referring to anyone as a reduced priority person. And hello? Why is BP monitoring this, that has about as much integrity as putting an embezzler in charge of a bank fraud investigation.)
“The immediate worry is what are called volatile organic compounds, which include chemicals like benzene that can be released in a vapor phase from the oil that’s floating in the water,” Solomon said. “These chemicals can cause acute health effects such as headache, nausea, vomiting, cough, dizziness. The chemicals can also cause longer-term effects, including the potential for miscarriage or low birth weight in pregnant women and risk of cancer over the longer term.”
“So far,” Solomon added, “the levels of these chemicals have been fairly low along the shore lines, so the main concern is for the emergency response workers. But we’re worried that as the oil gets closer to shore the levels of the chemicals in the air will rise.”
So what does all of this mean? Good question. We know that several of the ingredients in these products are harmful. To what extent, we simply don’t know because:
A. They have not been adequately tested for toxicity prior to use.
B. No one has ever taken a wholesale toxic chemical dump in a large body of water on this grand a scale before.
C. There is a concern that by breaking the oil up, the dispersants are making the oil itself, also toxic, harder to clean up.
D. As Solomon notes, the data that we are getting via BP is problematic, making quantifying the damage all the more difficult.
I don’t want to re-hash all the points I made in the Truthout article, but suffice to say, this additional information only confirms my concerns. We know that aquatic life is dying, that wetlands are being grievously harmed, and that people are suffering from a variety of health symptoms. What we don’t know and won’t for quite some time is what the reproductive consequences may be. In the meantime, it is urgent that data be properly collected and made available and that every precaution be made to protect the most vulnerable among us, particularly pregnant women and children.
Addenda: Two additional points that add to the urgency of addressing this issue, via the San Francisco Chronicle:
“In a report written by Anita George-Ares and James R. Clark for Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc. titled “Acute Aquatic Toxicity of Three Corexit Products: An Overview” Corexit 9500 was found to be one of the most toxic dispersal agents ever developed.
According to the Clark and George-Ares report, Corexit mixed with the higher gulf coast water temperatures becomes even more toxic.”
And even more worrisome:
“It seems like damage brought by the oil gusher has spread way beyond the ocean, coastal areas and beaches. Collateral damage now appears to include agricultural damage way inland Mississippi.
A mysterious “disease” has caused widespread damage to plants from weeds to farmed organic and conventionally grown crops. There is very strong suspicion that ocean winds have blown Corexit aerosol plumes or droplets and that dispersants have caused the unexplained widespread damage or “disease”.
There is no other explanation for the crop damage. Everything points to something that has a widespread effect on plants and crops. While no one precisely knows, all the signs point to BP’s use of aerosolized Corexit brought inland by the ocean winds or rain.
Remember acid rain? Now it seems we could have toxic dispersant rain.”
In the Truthout article, I mentioned acid rain as a reason to be concerned that the toxicity of the oil and the dispersants could move inland. At the time, quite honestly I wanted the ramifications of that happening to remain a hypothetical nightmare. It would appear that this may be exactly what is happening, and the implications for our food and water supplies, our health and our lives are very, very bad.
This picture is from the Deepwater Horizon Unified Response Website. Two VERY FUBAR things of note–it looks like their only protective gear, apart from sun hats is in the form of very skimpy looking gloves. No respirators or anything to protect arms. The other thing, most of the workers are clearly non-whites. This has been true in a number of pictures I’ve seen elsewhere as well. Racism, nah, I’m sure it is just a coincidence, just like Katrina.
We Americans are not very good at telling or hearing the truth, although we’d like to think that we are. We tell our schoolchildren that George Washington could not tell a lie about chopping down the cherry tree, even though, ironies of ironies, the story likely isn’t true. We fall all over ourselves giving the microphone to people whose whole understanding of the world is a lie (Rand Paul, Sarah Palin) because while we might not be very good at discerning or disseminating facts, we do so love our fiction.
“Next year’s budget allocates $159,000,000,000 to “contingency operations,” to perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s enough money to eliminate federal income taxes for the first $35,000 of every American’s income each year, and beyond that, leave over $15 billion that would cut the deficit.”
But the marshes are being destroyed, the oceans poisoned–there is no going back from this and as yet no way to stop it. This isn’t Exxon-Valdez, it is far, far worse and the damage beyond anything this country has ever seen and one which cannot be fixed. The Gulf coast as we know it is gone. The fishing, the tourism. There will be health consequences. There won’t be fish. Or perhaps coral reefs. Or perhaps us. And that is the truth of it.
“No one knows how much of BP’s runaway oil will contaminate the gulf coast’s marshes and lakes and bayous and canals, destroying wildlife and fauna — and ruining the hopes and dreams of countless human families. What is known is that whatever oil gets in will be next to impossible to get out. It gets into the soil and the water and the plant life and can’t be scraped off the way you might be able to scrape the oil off of a beach.
It permeates and undermines the ecosystem in much the same way that big corporations have permeated and undermined our political system, with similarly devastating results.”
And just how devastating? As bad as the consequences of what we have seen so far will be, it may get far, far worse:
“The oil field the Deepwater Horizon had tapped is said to be the second largest deposit in the world. Viewzone.com reports, “The site covers an estimated 25,000 square miles, extending from the inlands of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas. “
The oil deposit is so large, it could produce 500,000 barrels of a day for more than a decade.
Part of the reason the well exploded is because the site also contains large deposits of natural gas…
…The New York Times has reported that scientists suspect the leak is thousands of times larger than what BP has been reporting. Some estimates are as high as one million gallons a day.
Rock particles, gas and oil escaping under pressure are pushing against the capstone on the sea floor that surrounds the actual well. If it collapses, the canyon of oil will escape with a vengeance.
Neither BP nor anyone else wants to say what will happen it the wellhead gives way or the sea floor around it caves in.”
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Meanwhile, to hear government officials and Wall Street tell it, the economy is recovering, and perhaps in the language of economics it is. But in truth the ‘recovery’ looks something like an upside down Ponzi scheme, a bit like the Tempe, AZ City Hall.
All the wealth is at the top but there is little to support it down below–and unlike the architecturally brilliant building, the upside down economic pyramid must eventually fall down. We have almost pathological blinders when it comes to seeing the obvious perils to our continued existence–climate change and global warming, peak oil, water and food shortages, melting glaciers, species extinction, deforestration, floods, droughts, oceans under siege. But still we gulp the koolaid and believe that growth is good and things will be better soon. And we are just as blind when it comes to understanding that commodifying the sanctity of corporate well-being over human welfare is ultimately our downfall, not the path to prosperity that it claims to be.
I don’t watch much television, but I guess I should because it seems there is a Tru Tv which claims to be, “television’s destination for real-life stories told from an exciting and dramatic first-person perspective. “Not Reality. Actuality”. The truth will not be televised, but television is truth. As for the American dream, it is the reality show to end all reality shows. And in the finale, the truth will out, but unlike “Lost” or American Idol”, there won’t be re-runs and don’t hold your breath for a spin-off or a sequel.
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Note regarding dispersants: Via the Times Online this is why these are so very dangerous. I would add that we should be extremely worried about the impact on reproductive health on animals and humans as well:
“Dispersants can contain particular evils. Corexit 9527 — used extensively by BP despite it being toxic enough to be banned in British waters — contains 2-butoxyethanol, a compound that ruptures red blood cells in whatever eats it. Its replacement, COREXIT 9500, contains petroleum solvents and other components that can damage membranes, and cause chemical pneumonia if aspirated into the lungs following ingestion.
But what worries Dr (Susan) Shaw most is the long-term potential for toxic chemicals to build up in the food chain. “There are hundreds of organic compounds in oil, including toxic solvents and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), that can cause cancer in animals and people. In this respect light, sweet crude is more toxic than the heavy stuff. It’s not only the acute effects, the loss of whole niches in the food web, it’s also the problems we will see with future generations, especially in top predators.””
(According to) NOAA director of marine mammal health and stranding response Teri Rowles, a veterinarian, impacts on “those species living in deep water, like sperm whales, may not be detected,” because dead whales simply disappear beneath the waves. Plus, the use of dispersants beneath the surface to break up the oil into droplets may make it more damaging to deep-sea wildlife. “Instead of having big chunks of oil that are very buoyant and move very quickly to the surface, you have microdroplets with an enormous surface-to-volume ratio, which then are captured by the viscosity of the seawater. They’re stuck down there,” says environmental chemist Jeffrey Short of environmental group Oceana, who has studied the aftereffects of the Exxon Valdez spill. “Ancient deep-water corals, which are suspension feeders, are extraordinarily efficient at accumulating microdroplets of oil. It’s a major unseen impact.”
Much of the oil will also end up trapped in big eddies—like the infamous Pacific Garbage Patch or the Sargasso Sea—which is where sea turtles and other ocean life like to congregate. “Most of those mortalities will never make their way to shore to be counted,” said NOAA national sea turtle coordinator Barbara Schroeder.
Fishermen...are getting sick from the working on the cleanup, yet BP is assuring them they don’t need respirators or other special protection from the crude oil, strong hydrocarbon vapors, or chemical dispersants being sprayed in massive quantities on the oil slick.
The massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill is growing despite British Petroleum’s effort to siphon some of the spewing crude from its ruptured deepwater well, the U.S. Coast Guard official leading the cleanup warned Tuesday.
We’ve all had it happen–you spill a bit of greasy or oily food on your clothes and then frantically try to get it out before it stains–warm water, a bit of soap, stain remover. But the spot is still there, and your favorite blouse is ruined. Imagine this concept on a very grand scale…
Yesterday on Twitter, Kate Sheppard, an environmental reporter for Mother Jones, posted the following comments by EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson regarding the oil disaster in the Gulf at a Congressional hearing on the matter:
Jackson: EPA reserves right to stop use of dispersants under the water if determined that risks out weigh benefits.
Jackson: “We are working with BP and other to get less toxic dispersants to the site as quickly as possible.”
Jackson: “In the use of dispersants we are faced with environmental tradeoffs.”
Jackson: “We are also deeply concerned about the things we don’t know. The long term effects on aquatic life are not known.”
Jackson: “… and the use of subsea dispersants is unprecedented.”
Jackson: “That there are very large, unprecedented volumes of dispersants being used at the surface … “
Jackson, still on UK Corexit ban: “We’re still looking into it.”
Also, re: UK ban on Corexit: seems like their ban “had less to do with inherent toxicity and more to do with near-shore impacts”
Jackson says that perhaps the science is far enough along in understanding the impacts of dispersant use in this volume.
Jackson, more on dispersants: “There has been a real reliance on them, maybe more than anybody thought would ever happen.”
Regarding the first statement above–there is only one itsy bitsy problem with this–we likely won’t know the harms until after it is used since obviously any sort of realistic scientific testing has not been done. And the comments in total amount to bureaucratic doublespeak for hell if we know/we got nothing. Which makes this morning’s announcement that BP has been given a go-ahead to use the dispersants below the surface very ominous indeed.
“Based on the scientific analysis of the EPA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and review by the National Response Team, it has been determined that the use of dispersants at the subsea source is the prudent and responsible action to take along with other tactics including surface dispersant, skimming and controlled burns,” said Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen, the spill’s national incident commander…
…to safeguard nearshore areas from any dispersant-related harm, these chemicals may not be used within three miles of the U.S. coastline or where water is less than 10 meters deep.”
Really? Did someone tell the dispersant to stay in the deep end and not even to think about surfing on in to shore. Forgive me for not feeling re-assured. I’ve posted a lot about this disaster in the last few weeks. It isn’t because it is the only horrific problem facing this world, but for reasons that I can’t even verbalize, it has pierced my soul. It wakes me at night and haunts me during the day. William Rivers Pitt says it more eloquently than I in describing his response to this series of photos of the disaster from the Boston Globe:
“I’m beginning to believe I have lost the capacity to weep. We’ve been through so much in the last ten years. So much damage has been done in so many places and in so many ways. Millions of people have died in wars and acts of terrorism, of disease and starvation and neglect and atrocity. Our Constitution has been ravaged, our economy pillaged, New Orleans was shattered and Detroit has been left to rot. The Supreme Court sealed the deal and made us all slaves to the corporate ethic, which scantly exists beyond a profit motive devoid of morals or genuine patriotism.
But something in those pictures makes me feel worse than I have in a long time, even after encompassing every other horror we have endured. I can’t explain why; worse things have happened than this Gulf spill (maybe), but my heart hurts and my gut feels hollow when I look at the pictures, and I cannot weep.”
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In the end perhaps it comes to this–you can always buy a new blouse, but when the ocean is ruined, it cannot be replaced.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of going to vote in the Kentucky primary with my youngest son who was voting for the first time. Afterwords, I congratulated my son for becoming a stakeholder in everything that is wrong in this country.
This morning I’m sitting here sipping a lovely cup of organic green tea, wondering how it is that a wingnut crazy tea partier like Rand Paul could win the Republican primary for Senate. I mean Mitch McConnell is the man in this state and he supported Paul’s opponent. And that so far as I know is the only time I ever agreed with McConnell. This morning ABC’s Robin Roberts wondering how this ‘populist’ movement leader could have delivered his victory speech at a country club, gotta love Paul’s explanation:
“This morning on ‘GMA’ Republican and Tea Party victor in Kentucky’s Senate Primary, Rand Paul spoke with Robin Roberts about his victory. He’s already coming under fire for holding a victory party at a private country club while at the same time claiming to be a man of the people:
ROBIN: Some people find it a bit ironic that your victory party last night was at a private country club in Kentucky. Doesn’t that kind of send a mixed message there?
PAUL: I think at one time people used to think of golf and golf courses and golf clubs as being exclusive. But I think in recent years now you see a lot of people playing golf. I think Tiger Woods has helped to broaden that in the sense that he’s brought golf to a lot of the cities and to city youth, and so no, I don’t think it’s nearly as exclusive as people once considered it to be.”
Presumably we will soon see Paul campaigning on the golf courses on the west (and decidedly less white and rich) side of Louisville. Oh wait, what golf courses?
And here is a picture of Paul’s private security detail before the election–let’s just gaze upon that for a bit and try to imagine what this guy would be like if he got elected. In November, how about we actually get out there and vote, because when less than 30% of us do so, it isn’t the voters who bear the blame, it is those who don’t.
