Pathfinder
Editor, Senior Moderator
BP Oil Still Tars the Gulf
By Antonia Juhasz, April 2012 issue
Excerpt:
For many Americans, the story of the BP disaster began on April 20, 2010, and ended on August 15 of that year, when the Obama Administration declared that ?the majority of the oil is gone,? though the opposite was true.
For those on the Gulf Coast, the disaster remains, and life continues to be measured in terms of ?before? and ?after? the BP oil spill.
...
?Can we completely recover from this?? Jamie asks me, ?Probably not. At what level will we recover? I don?t know. If the oyster beds no longer produce, the shrimp migrate away, land loss continues. . . . ? Jamie pauses before she speaks again. ?It will take years for us to really know.?
They also worry about the safety of the meat. ?Crabs and oysters get everything from the water,? Jamie explains. ?So, can we trust them??
The short answer for Jamie, her three-year-old daughter, Camille, and their family is most likely no, based on the research of scientist Miriam Rotkin-Ellman of the Natural Resources Defense Council and her colleagues Drs. Karen K. Wong and Gina M. Solomon. Writing in the National Institutes of Health?s Environmental Health Perspectives journal, they identify numerous problems with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration?s (FDA) assertion that Gulf seafood is safe for all to eat.
The FDA assessment is based on a 176-pound adult (75 percent of women in the United States weigh less than this) eating a diet based on national, rather than local Gulf Coast, characteristics, a weekly diet consisting of just one type of seafood and, for shrimp, a total of just four jumbo shrimp. People in Gulf states, particularly those who live on the coast, typically eat multiple types of Gulf seafood per week, if not at once (think gumbo), and eat it every day, often several times a day.
?The FDA [also] does not account for the fact that children are known to be more vulnerable to contaminants in seafood because they eat more per pound of their bodyweight and their developing bodies are more sensitive to harmful contaminants,? Dr. Solomon writes on her blog. ?What?s more, in a pregnant woman, these contaminants can cross the placenta and harm the developing fetus.?
The FDA set a lower bar for acceptable cancer risk than the one following the Exxon Valdez oil spill: one cancer incidence in one million people in five years versus one in one million in ten years.
It is impossible to accurately determine the safety of Gulf seafood for anyone, Rotkin-Ellman tells me, without a more robust model.
Seafood is only one among many threats to human health caused by the disaster...
...
People across the Gulf are suffering from a long list of ailments consistent with exposure to the pollutants and toxins in oil and chemical dispersants. As Wilma Subra and others have documented, these include headaches, nausea, respiratory problems (including asthma attacks), irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, rashes and irritated, itching, and even burned skin, and, in rare cases, neurological impacts, including memory loss.
Of particular concern are the large numbers of children suffering frequent bronchial and stomach ailments and skin rashes. Those who live nearest the spill site have had the highest incidence.
Humans aren?t the only ones getting sick. So, too, are the region?s fish. Dr. James H. Cowan Jr., of the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences and the Coastal Fisheries Institute at Louisiana State University, has found a decline in the diversity and abundance of different fish species since the spill. He also has found fish with secondary infections that are indicative of compromised immune systems. Typical are lesions on livers, skin lesions, ulcers, and high parasite infestations that are much higher than normal, he tells me. In some areas with cumulative surface oiling after the spill, he found some sites where as many as 50 percent of fish caught had lesions and sores. He estimates that about twenty fish species have been identified thus far as suffering these impacts.
Dr. Darryl Felder of the Department of Biology at Louisiana State University has similarly observed high incidence of spots, lesions, and species decline since the spill among the tiny crustaceans (crabs, shrimp, and lobsters) of the deep Gulf waters. His biggest fear, he tells me, is ?ecosystem collapse.?
Larger mammals have also been impacted. In February 2011, during the first dolphin calving season in the wake of the spill, dozens of dead baby dolphins and aborted fetuses washed up on Gulf beaches. Normal death rates are just one or two a season.
In reefs closest to the spill site, Dr. Cowan reports, ?What?s missing, in some areas completely, are a lot of the small species that occupy the bottom third of the water column and come into lots of contact with the seafloor.? The reason? ?This is where BP?s oil has settled,? he tells me.
On the road to Grand Isle in January, Wilma Subra and I stop at Elmer?s Island. There we find large fresh globs of oil mixed with seaweed and in the shells of oysters. We also see fresh oil floating in the water, as well as oiled fish.
Last August, Tropical Storm Lee swept through the Gulf Coast, carrying fierce waves, wind, rain, and BP?s oil. On August 13, Jason Berry found upwards of 100 ?tar logs? on Mississippi?s Ship Island, heavy cylinder-shaped mounds of tar that look like a log you?d throw on the fire.
According to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, an independent lab confirmed the logs? composition to be BP oil. Jason tells me via e-mail that similar logs have washed up in other areas. ?What that tells us,? he argues, ?is that the sea floor is probably covered with these logs. The oil is most likely rolling along the seafloor like tumbleweed and forming them.?
...
Casi Callaway, the intrepid executive director of Alabama?s Mobile Baykeeper, works with a broad network of organizations to bring restoration and long-term recovery to the Gulf. Like so many others I speak with, she often feels alone in these efforts, all but forgotten by the rest of the country.
I ask Casi to tell me the first thing that comes to mind when reflecting on the two-year anniversary of the spill. She replies: ?Please God, can I go to the beach again with my kid and feel safe? But the second thing is, with the Exxon Valdez, it took years before the full effects were felt. What are we going to lose? And who?s going to be watching??
http://progressive.org/bp_oil_still_tars_the_gulf.html
By Antonia Juhasz, April 2012 issue
Excerpt:
For many Americans, the story of the BP disaster began on April 20, 2010, and ended on August 15 of that year, when the Obama Administration declared that ?the majority of the oil is gone,? though the opposite was true.
For those on the Gulf Coast, the disaster remains, and life continues to be measured in terms of ?before? and ?after? the BP oil spill.
...
?Can we completely recover from this?? Jamie asks me, ?Probably not. At what level will we recover? I don?t know. If the oyster beds no longer produce, the shrimp migrate away, land loss continues. . . . ? Jamie pauses before she speaks again. ?It will take years for us to really know.?
They also worry about the safety of the meat. ?Crabs and oysters get everything from the water,? Jamie explains. ?So, can we trust them??
The short answer for Jamie, her three-year-old daughter, Camille, and their family is most likely no, based on the research of scientist Miriam Rotkin-Ellman of the Natural Resources Defense Council and her colleagues Drs. Karen K. Wong and Gina M. Solomon. Writing in the National Institutes of Health?s Environmental Health Perspectives journal, they identify numerous problems with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration?s (FDA) assertion that Gulf seafood is safe for all to eat.
The FDA assessment is based on a 176-pound adult (75 percent of women in the United States weigh less than this) eating a diet based on national, rather than local Gulf Coast, characteristics, a weekly diet consisting of just one type of seafood and, for shrimp, a total of just four jumbo shrimp. People in Gulf states, particularly those who live on the coast, typically eat multiple types of Gulf seafood per week, if not at once (think gumbo), and eat it every day, often several times a day.
?The FDA [also] does not account for the fact that children are known to be more vulnerable to contaminants in seafood because they eat more per pound of their bodyweight and their developing bodies are more sensitive to harmful contaminants,? Dr. Solomon writes on her blog. ?What?s more, in a pregnant woman, these contaminants can cross the placenta and harm the developing fetus.?
The FDA set a lower bar for acceptable cancer risk than the one following the Exxon Valdez oil spill: one cancer incidence in one million people in five years versus one in one million in ten years.
It is impossible to accurately determine the safety of Gulf seafood for anyone, Rotkin-Ellman tells me, without a more robust model.
Seafood is only one among many threats to human health caused by the disaster...
...
People across the Gulf are suffering from a long list of ailments consistent with exposure to the pollutants and toxins in oil and chemical dispersants. As Wilma Subra and others have documented, these include headaches, nausea, respiratory problems (including asthma attacks), irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, rashes and irritated, itching, and even burned skin, and, in rare cases, neurological impacts, including memory loss.
Of particular concern are the large numbers of children suffering frequent bronchial and stomach ailments and skin rashes. Those who live nearest the spill site have had the highest incidence.
Humans aren?t the only ones getting sick. So, too, are the region?s fish. Dr. James H. Cowan Jr., of the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences and the Coastal Fisheries Institute at Louisiana State University, has found a decline in the diversity and abundance of different fish species since the spill. He also has found fish with secondary infections that are indicative of compromised immune systems. Typical are lesions on livers, skin lesions, ulcers, and high parasite infestations that are much higher than normal, he tells me. In some areas with cumulative surface oiling after the spill, he found some sites where as many as 50 percent of fish caught had lesions and sores. He estimates that about twenty fish species have been identified thus far as suffering these impacts.
Dr. Darryl Felder of the Department of Biology at Louisiana State University has similarly observed high incidence of spots, lesions, and species decline since the spill among the tiny crustaceans (crabs, shrimp, and lobsters) of the deep Gulf waters. His biggest fear, he tells me, is ?ecosystem collapse.?
Larger mammals have also been impacted. In February 2011, during the first dolphin calving season in the wake of the spill, dozens of dead baby dolphins and aborted fetuses washed up on Gulf beaches. Normal death rates are just one or two a season.
In reefs closest to the spill site, Dr. Cowan reports, ?What?s missing, in some areas completely, are a lot of the small species that occupy the bottom third of the water column and come into lots of contact with the seafloor.? The reason? ?This is where BP?s oil has settled,? he tells me.
On the road to Grand Isle in January, Wilma Subra and I stop at Elmer?s Island. There we find large fresh globs of oil mixed with seaweed and in the shells of oysters. We also see fresh oil floating in the water, as well as oiled fish.
Last August, Tropical Storm Lee swept through the Gulf Coast, carrying fierce waves, wind, rain, and BP?s oil. On August 13, Jason Berry found upwards of 100 ?tar logs? on Mississippi?s Ship Island, heavy cylinder-shaped mounds of tar that look like a log you?d throw on the fire.
According to the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, an independent lab confirmed the logs? composition to be BP oil. Jason tells me via e-mail that similar logs have washed up in other areas. ?What that tells us,? he argues, ?is that the sea floor is probably covered with these logs. The oil is most likely rolling along the seafloor like tumbleweed and forming them.?
...
Casi Callaway, the intrepid executive director of Alabama?s Mobile Baykeeper, works with a broad network of organizations to bring restoration and long-term recovery to the Gulf. Like so many others I speak with, she often feels alone in these efforts, all but forgotten by the rest of the country.
I ask Casi to tell me the first thing that comes to mind when reflecting on the two-year anniversary of the spill. She replies: ?Please God, can I go to the beach again with my kid and feel safe? But the second thing is, with the Exxon Valdez, it took years before the full effects were felt. What are we going to lose? And who?s going to be watching??
http://progressive.org/bp_oil_still_tars_the_gulf.html
