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dispersants
"Making It Right" After BP Oil Disaster Is Up to Us - Not BP
Apr 21, 2012
Grand Isle, Louisiana. When I returned to Cordova, Alaska, in December 2010 after my first six-month stint in the Gulf coast communities impacted by the Deepwater Horizon BP oil disaster, fishermen greeted me wryly. "See you found your way home."
Fishermen were interested in stories because even then, twenty-one years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, there was still no sense of closure. Exxon never "made it right." How could Exxon "make right" family lives shattered by divorce, suicide, or strange illnesses stemming from the "cleanup" work? Or the sense of betrayal by the Supreme Court to hold Exxon to its promise to "pay all reasonable claims"?
As fishermen listened to the Gulf stories, one asked, "Do they know how f---ed they are yet?" No, I explained, they've only lost one fishing season and they just now are filing claims for the first deadline.
When I returned to the Gulf in early January 2011, I heard the same story from Louisiana to Florida. "Everything you warned us about is coming true." During the next four months, I witnessed "oil-sick" people from grandbabies to elders, people distraught from claims denied, shellfish fisheries collapsing, baby and adult dolphins dying in unusually high numbers, continued dispersant spraying, and the early stages of Gulf ecosystem collapse -- all while nationwide ads claimed BP is "making it right."
Two years after the BP oil disaster, I ask for people to help make it right -- in the Gulf and across the country. We have the power to stop BP and the federal government from doing more harm. It is time to exercise our power in our communities.
Stop the false ad campaign.
When you hear one of BP's "making it right" ads, call your local media station. Tell them to pull the greenwashing ads and get the real story. The Gulf is sick and so are its coastal residents. Money, even heaps of it, will never make it right. Airing the misleading ads only makes things worse, especially in the Gulf where people despise BP's bid to brainwash other Americans.
Stop spraying chemical dispersants.
Chemical dispersants are the oil industry's preferred method of marine spill response in the United States. Dispersants drive the oil out of sight, out of mind, while dispersant production companies like Nalco profit handsomely and the spiller writes off the expense as a cost of doing business. Big oil companies often make their own dispersants -- and profits from sales -- but hide connections through subsidiaries. Small wonder that spillers prefer dispersants.
The problem with dispersants is exactly what is occurring in the Gulf. The federal government uses outdated and minimal testing procedures for dispersants, which hugely underestimate the chemicals' impacts to marine -- and human -- life. Some of the reported chemicals in dispersants are known human health hazards; many of the proprietary chemicals are as well as we learned from Gulf disclosures. Dispersants are now linked, or heavily implicated, with the widespread occurrences of lesions and maladies in fish and shellfish, dolphin deaths, and dramatic decline in populations of some Gulf species such as shrimps and killifish.
Yet people have a say in dispersant use. For example, dispersants were sprayed in the Gulf in coastal seas and nearshore areas in direct contradiction to reports from the US Coast Guard and EPA because the coastal states have signed pre-approval letters to allow dispersant use anywhere, anytime. But people in coastal communities of America could pass local ordinances banning dispersant use in state waters after marine oil spills; people could make sure their state had a signed no-approval letter as part of their Regional Response Team's spill contingency plan. Changing the National Contingency Plan would take more effort, so let's start locally by banning these deadly chemicals in our coastal seas.
Stop pretending that people in the Gulf coastal communities aren't "oil-sick" and that BP isn't responsible and liable.
It's not only the dolphins that are sick and dying. For two years, BP and the state and federal governments denied the epidemic of respiratory problems, dizziness and headaches, horrific skin lesions, and blood problems was linked with the oil and chemical disaster -- despite the fact that medical literature identifies these identical symptoms as characteristic of oil spill exposure. Now under the BP-Plaintiffs' Settlement, BP has agreed to pay literally billions of dollars for medical claims, medical monitoring for twenty-one years, medical services, and community health clinics for underserved populations staffed with specialists in chemical illness treatment -- but with no admission of liability.
Get educated and educate others about what is happening in the Gulf. Tell your local film festivals to screen the award-winning Gulf documentary, Dirty Energy, in which local residents talk about being "oil-sick." Many of the same chemicals in dispersants are in drilling muds, used in both onshore and offshore oil drilling, and in injection fluids, used in hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") in drilling for natural gas. Not surprisingly, the "oil-sick" symptoms are not limited to the Gulf.
Stop pretending that people in other oil sacrifice communities aren't "oil-sick" and that the oil companies aren't responsible and liable.
Independent films such as Gas Land and Split Estate are amplifying voices of residents from shale gas sites who are suing over fracking side-effects including earthquakes, exploding tap water, and mysterious debilitating illnesses. In Pennsylvania, residents are forced to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from speaking about their contaminated well water in trade for a supply of clean fresh water from the very companies that caused the problem -- while the same companies then claim there is no documented evidence of well contamination.
Independent filmmakers and videographers have amplified the voices of people sickened from the tars sands drilling operations in Alberta, Canada, and the 2010 tar sands oil spill in Battle Creek, Michigan. Already eleven people have died in one small trailer court near the Kalamazoo River from illnesses that they and their doctors believe were triggered or worsened by the tar sands that flowed past their homes and soiled the river banks.
Start taking responsibility for what is happening in your backyard.
The oil companies are polluting our air, poisoning our drinking water and land, poisoning people and communities across the country, collapsing ocean ecosystems from Alaska's Prince William Sound to the Gulf of Mexico, and even altering our climate in pursuit of profit, while leaving people and communities with the costs. The federal government clearly has no exit strategy off fossil fuels, so is beholden to -- actually partnered with -- this industry. When the industry and its supporters chant drill, baby, drill, politicians enable oil activities and help maximize profit by drilling loopholes and exemptions into the very laws and regulations designed to protect public health, worker safety, and the environment.
It is the ordinary people, not the bureaucrats and oil cats, who have the power to alter our collective future -- and make it right for everyone. We all matter.
We start with town meetings to recognize what we value collectively in our community, determine a shared vision, then prioritize the actions to achieve that vision. We move our money and resources to encourage businesses that match our values. Towns across America are doing this now as people strive to become more self-reliant from the corporate-driven government policies that disconnect our jobs from what we love and value.
We need to insist on energy sources that do not create, then sacrifice, communities. We need an energy policy that leaves no Americans behind -- not in the mountains of Appalachia, not in the Gulf of Mexico or along the North Slope of Alaska, not in the western Rockies or over the eastern Marcellus shale deposits, not in northern tar sands oil pits or pipeline corridors, not on foreign soil in wars over oil.
Making it right in the Gulf starts with diversifying our energy portfolio in our own backyards. A federal energy policy for the sake of energy alone will "make it wrong" for many people because all jobs not created equal. Jobs that simultaneously support healthy people, thriving communities, and environmental quality are worth more than jobs that pollute and poison the biosphere for profit.
What government of, for, and by the people puts corporate profit above the wellbeing of millions of people and the very survival of the youngest generations? Governments are instituted to secure the safety, health, and wellbeing of the people. Laws and policies that fail to safeguard these rights and protect the environment are illegitimate and unjust in a democratic society. Writing laws to protect our backyards starts in our backyards with local ordinances. The community-based movement builds to constitutional reform to assert that only real humans are sovereign and entitled to human rights.
The transformation starts when we believe that we have the power to act. When enough of us prove another way is possible and demand change, the politicians will have no choice but to follow the people's lead and make things right in America.
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Lots of Inconvenient Truths -- Chemical Illness Epidemic in the Wake of the BP Blowout
Jun 09, 2011
Recently Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer overseeing the $20 billion Gulf Coast Claims Facility to "make it right" for people harmed by the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil blowout disaster, told a Louisiana House and Senate committee that he had not seen any claims, or any scientific evidence, linking BP's oil and dispersant release to chemical illnesses. Feinberg also stated that chemical illnesses take years to show up -- conveniently well after his tenure with the compensation fund.
Instead of tossing the media a juicy bone, Feinberg tossed a red herring. He is wrong at worst, or intentionally misleading at best, on all points.
The GCCF process makes it difficult for people to be compensated for medical claims or even raise illness claims, while making it easy to release claims and rights to future medical care and benefits for chemical illnesses or other medically-proven illness related to the BP blowout and disaster response.
In fact the GCCF process is so blatantly egregious in terms of protecting corporate liability at the expense of human rights and health that a bill was introduced in the Louisiana state legislature, specifically targeting the BP oil disaster, to declare such "contractual releases are invalid as against public policy" and the release of claims to future medical care and related benefits null and void. In Louisiana. BP lobbyists are reportedly out in force, trying to gut the legislation.
Further, the pro-industry bias in the GCCF process turned thousands of people away. Over 130,000-plus claimants have filed lawsuits, now consolidated in Louisiana federal court under Judge Carl Barbier. According to one of the law firms involved, many of these claimants have indicated concerns about health and desire medical monitoring.
Feinberg's downplay of chemical illnesses and other medical issues stemming from the BP oil disaster -- with full knowledge of the parallel court proceedings -- shows that he and his boss, BP, have no intention of "making it right" for people in the Gulf.
"Not recognizing that there is a problem -- that's the problem," said Joey Yerkes, a former Florida cast net fisherman who became sick from chemical exposure while doing cleanup work during summer 2010. He filed a medical illness claim for compensation through the GCCF in early 2011 despite the obstacles. He had to file all his paperwork for medical claims twice because the GCCF employees could not find his initial paperwork. Joey undertook a rigorous treatment under medical care to detoxify his body -- but he exhausted his finances before completing treatment. Now he is forced to wait for the BP-controlled GCCF to pay, while his health steadily deteriorates. It's all he can do, he says, "just to chase my 2-year-old daughter around the park when we play."
Unlike Joey Yerkes, Monette Wynne has not filed medical claims through the GCCF. Her entire family -- herself, husband, 4-year-old twins, and 6-year-old child -- all tested positive for oil in their blood after spending last summer in their seaside home in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. Wynne was so upset about her sick family that she and her husband drove to Atlanta, Georgia, and presented the family's test results to seven toxicologists with the federal agency, Center for Disease Control.
"We were told the levels of oil were of no concern," Wynne said. The federal scientists told them their levels of oil in blood were typical of urban dwellers who breathe traffic exhaust. Wynne didn't believe it -- her family's blood work shows they have more oil in their blood than most people, and her family is all sick with symptoms like those of Joey Yerkes -- symptoms that became widespread in Gulf communities during summer 2010; symptoms that are not going away. Wynne is considering borrowing money to treat her family. She and her husband had exhausted their savings to buy their dream home, a home that is now for sale.
Unfortunately for Joey Yerkes and the Wynne family -- and the legions of other Gulf residents and visitors with similar medical issues from summer 2010, British Petroleum is the "responsible party" for its disaster, but BP is actually responsible, by law, to its shareholders, not the injured people in the Gulf. This inherent conflict of interest means Feinberg is nothing more than a well-paid sock puppet for BP. He can be expected to act to minimize liability and financial damages for the "responsible party" by covering up the chemical illness epidemic in the Gulf.
Further, the federal laws and regulations designed to protect public health, worker safety, and the environment from oil and chemical poisoning are so riddled with exemptions that they cannot deliver their promise of protection -- as people near oil drilling and hydrologic fracturing ("fracking") operations have discovered. Social documentaries such as Gaslands and Split Estate exposed chemical illnesses and symptoms similar to the Gulf injuries and independent studies documented groundwater contamination, but the federal government still denies there is a problem.
Similarly, the federal government is also in denial about the horrific-and-federally-sanctioned poisoning of the Gulf people and wildlife, despite prior and post knowledge of the extent of contamination and the health impacts of oil and chemicals used to drill or disperse oil.
As Joey pointed out, denial of the problem is the problem. At the root of the issue of oil and chemical poisoning in the Gulf and elsewhere in America lies the problem of corporate constitutional rights -- transnational corporations claiming human rights. The challenge for all Americans is to reclaim our democracy and end corporate rule.
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Diary of a Disaster: 6 Months in the Gulf
What it’s like to respond to an environmental and democratic crisis—and where we go from here.
Jan 12, 2011
America awoke the morning of April 21 to learn that BP's well, the Deepwater Horizon, had blown out in the Gulf of Mexico and was on fire. Eleven men were dead. BP began dumping dispersants (toxic chemicals that sink oil) into the Gulf and lies into the media.
I had left Alaska on February 10 for another round of national talks on the democracy crisis and how we can take back our government... from the corporations. My phone went berserk with media requests. Lisa Marie, my assistant and friend, asked when I was going down to the Gulf. "I'm not," I said. She knew better.
For both of us, it was deja vu. During the Exxon Valdez oil spill 21 years earlier in Alaska, Lisa Marie had worked with traumatized children and families. She worked for several years as a board member and volunteer for the Cordova Family Resource Center. With my doctorate in marine pollution, I became a spokesperson for the commercial fishing industry, testifying in the state legislature and Congress for stronger spill prevention measures and working to ban dispersants, and then starting the Copper River Watershed Project to help the community recover from long-term socioeconomic impacts. Lisa Marie knew I needed time to process my own memories that surged afresh with BP's blowout, the inept government-industry response, and the lies.
It took me a week to come out of my foxhole. I thought about all the mistakes our community had made after the Exxon-Valdez spill, of all that we'd learned during our decades of fighting. All of the communities in the Gulf will make the same mistakes, I thought glumly... unless someone warns them. Suddenly I realized that someone was me.
On May 3, Lisa Marie and I flew to New Orleans. She had a return ticket; I did not. Before the flight, a black limousine took me to a studio in Denver for an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!; a black limousine picked us up in New Orleans for an interview with Anderson Cooper on AC 360. The pace didn't slow down for five months.
From May through early October, I drove back and forth across the Gulf, giving community talks and workshops that evolved with the needs:
May
Shared Exxon Valdez stories and encouraged people to come up with a Plan B-how they could help themselves instead of waiting for BP or the federal government to make them whole as Exxon had promised, but failed, to do in Alaska.
In the town of Jean Lafitte, one Cajun fisherman stopped me mid-talk and begged, "Miss Riki, c-a-a-a-a-lm down!" A week later, my southern hosts had figured out how to "handle" me: "Miss Riki, she's high-strung. You gotta sit 'er down and feed 'er!" That worked.
June
Ordinary folks across the Gulf are turning to covert operations, grabbing cameras to document and report oil sightings and dispersant use in coastal seas.
Encouraged people to take air and water quality samples to document the damage from the spill and the threat to human health (the federal agencies' sampling programs found nothing to support the outbreak of respiratory illnesses and skin "rashes" that residents were experiencing). We amassed documentation of "disappeared" evidence.
A security guard in Florida hid behind bushes to take photos of BP-contracted Waste Management employees dumping wildlife carcasses in a dumpster. She sent the photos from her cell phone. "You can see the bush in the picture!" says Lisa Marie.
July
Encouraged people to take blood samples to link their illnesses with the high levels of oil and dispersants they were finding in their air and water. They tested outdoor swimming pools, rain, bayous, and beach sand.
August
Following massive use of oil dispersants in heavily populated coastal areas, dealt with extremely sick (and now dying) people. (The federal government and BP still deny this occurred, though federal investigators now have documentation. I believe the spraying was done to keep up appearances that the oil was "gone"-conveniently in time for mid-term elections.) Found medical doctors to properly diagnose and treat people as doctors in the Gulf were diagnosing anything but chemical illnesses. Encouraged those challenging re-opening of commercial fisheries, as they were still finding lots of evidence of oil and dispersants.
In Bayou La Batre, Alabama, two state officials tried to convince an audience of fishermen that it was okay to fish in coastal waters. Finally, one exasperated fellow boomed into the microphone, "I am a coon ass, not a dumb ass!"
September and October
Same as August.
In Louisiana, folks are calling the renamed Mineral Management Services, an agency captured by the oil industry it is charged with regulating, "Bummer"-for Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE). It fits. BP and the Coast Guard call the oil that still washes ashore "algae." It's not. The new joke in Louisiana is to go to BP stations and ask them to fill up and check the "algae."
In mid-October, I resumed the national tour that was interrupted in April, finally finding my way home on December 6 after being gone for 290 days! Cordovans showered me with thank-yous, hugs, and "'atta girls." It felt great.
Now
Now I'm back in the Gulf. There's a lot on my list, from continuing the work of banning dispersants to finding a university that will partner with community organizations to conduct a 20-year study on the health impacts of the spill on Gulf residents.
The story isn't over. Indeed, this story has the potential to unite Americans in a serious commitment to transition off fossil fuels , starting with a permanent ban on deepwater offshore drilling. It's also an opportunity to confront the dangerous expansion of corporate power -for the people I've met here, watching the government protect BP instead of them has been more instructive than anything I could tell them.
It's not too late to make sure the outcome of this spill is not, as it was twenty years ago, a return to "oil business as usual."
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Bio-Remediation or Bio-Hazard? Dispersants, Bacteria & Illness in the Gulf
Sep 17, 2010
OCEAN SPRINGS, AL -- A grandmother made me rethink all the bio-remediation hype. The "naturally-occurring oil-eating bacteria" have been newsworthy of late as they are supposedly going to come to the rescue of President Obama and BP and make good on their very premature statement that "the oil is gone."
We were talking about subsurface oil in the Gulf when she said matter-of-factly, "The bacteria are running amok with the dispersants." What? "Those oil-eating bacteria - I think they're running amok and causing skin rashes." My mind reeled. Could we all have missed something so simple?
The idea was crazy but, in the context of the Gulf situation - an outbreak of mysterious persistent rashes from southern Louisiana across to just north of Tampa, Florida, coincident with BP's oil and chemical release, it seemed suddenly worthy of investigating.
I first heard about the rash from Sheri Allen in Mobile, Alabama. Allen wrote of red welts and blisters on her legs after "splashing and wading on the shoreline" of Mobile Bay with her two dogs on May 8. She reported that "hundreds of dead fish" washed up on the same beach over the following two days. This was much too early for the summer sun to have warmed the water to the point of oxygen depletion, but not too early for dispersants and dispersed oil to be mixed into the Gulf's water mass. By early July, Allen's rash had healed, leaving black bruises and scarring.
Other people - both residents and visitors to the Gulf coast - wrote of similar rashes or other skin problems like peeling palms. The rashes have been diagnosed as scabies and staph infections, including MRSA, the potentially lethal Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. Most cases lingered for months, as the rash did not respond well to antibiotics, steroid creams, or steroid shots.
That should have been a clue that maybe the primary cause was not biological, but chemical. A secondary biological infection might clear up with antibiotic treatment, but then keep reoccurring because the primary chemical illness had not been treated.
Retired Registered Nurse Allison Schmidt agrees. Referring to Allen's case, she said, "I can say without hesitation that these skin rashes have nothing to do with scabies. Scabies is a parasite, which causes a skin infection and is extremely contagious. It spreads from person to person by direct skin contact or by wearing an article of clothing worn by an infected person." Schmidt said, "If this were scabies you would see entire families infected and NOT just a single family member."
Another clue to the real cause of the mystery rash is its prevalence across the entire oil-impacted Gulf. Something in the water or air, or both, could explain this. While public officials and BP claim that dispersant use was halted in May for Corexit 9527A and on July 19 for Corexit 9500A, evidence collected by Gulf residents has shown that dispersants are being used in nearshore and inland waters, close to highly populated areas across the Gulf. Further, oil and the Corexit marker have been found in air and inland water.
I have heard from Gulf residents and visitors who developed a rash or peeling palms from contact with Gulf water, including such activities as swimming or wading, getting splashed, handling oiled material or dead animals without gloves, and shucking crabs from the recently opened Gulf fisheries. I have also heard from people who developed the same symptoms after contact with Gulf air by wiping an oily film off their airplane's leading edges after flying over the Gulf (absorbent pad tested positive for oil) or swimming in outdoor pools, or splashing in puddles, after it rained.
Outraged by the unprecedented release of oil and toxic chemicals in the Gulf, Nurse Schmidt and Mike McDowell developed a project to test Gulf rainwater for harmful chemicals. Schmidt said, "We are convinced the chemicals used in the Gulf to help disperse oil have evaporated and will eventually come down mixed with the rain."
Another clue, more like a condemnation, is that NOAA and EPA decided (link*) to use dispersants in the Gulf without considering what harm the chemicals and dispersed oil might do to people, specifically, the general public. Dr. Sylvia Earle, former chief scientist of NOAA, and other scientists, criticized the agencies' decision, in part, based on concern about harm to human health. Other scientists have also criticized the agencies' decision. Citing the National Academy of Sciences, a Texas Tech University professor testified in Congress that the chemicals break down cell walls, making organisms (including people) more susceptible to oil. The professor called the Gulf an "eco-toxicological experiment," which is inexcusable, because OSHA has known about harm from solvent exposure since at least 1987. Don't these federal agencies talk amongst themselves - or with others?
Which all brings me back to the grandmother. After talking with her, I've been reading about bacteria, and I now think the Great Gulf Experiment is going very badly for humans. One can only wonder about the rest of the ecosystem.
There are two distinct types of bacteria based on the structure of their cell walls. Gram-positive bacteria have a single-membrane cell wall, while Gram-negative bacteria have a double-membrane cell wall. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria are "Gram-positive," while the oil-eating bacteria are Gram-negative.
But! A component of the double-membrane cell wall structure of Gram-negative bacteria can irritate human skin, causing inflammation and activating the immune system. In other words, oil-eating bacteria, just because they are Gram-negative, can cause skin rashes. In the case of Alcanivorax borkumensis, the reaction can erupt on the skin like MRSA infections.
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. Oil-eating bacteria produce bio-films. According to Nurse Schmidt, studies have found that bio-films are rapidly colonized (p. 97) by other Gram-negative bacteria - including those known to infect humans.
Scientists anticipated early on that the Gulf leak would cause populations of oil-eating bacteria to soar. Still, infections are not likely in healthy people. However, exposure to oil weakens a person's immune system function, as does the mental stress of dealing with disaster trauma. And then there are people who are more at risk than others to bacterial infections, especially when first challenged with oil and solvent exposure. This includes children, people with cystic fibrosis or asthma, and African Americans (who are prone to blood disorders), to name a few.
Is this the perfect storm - an exploding population of opportunistic Gram-negative bacteria (some natural, some not), millions of gallons of food (oil) for the bacteria, and a susceptible population of stressed-out people?
Perhaps. If the outbreak of skin rashes across the Gulf is any indication, the health care providers, media, and Congress ought to be taking a hard look at this question. Further, people ought to be connecting the dots to illnesses that surfaced in Exxon Valdez spill responders and to the illnesses occurring now in Michigan residents coping with the Enbridge oil pipeline spill.
In the Gulf, Nurse Schmidt believes, "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 - which may have been triggered by BP's disaster. "
The nurse and I think the grandmother is onto something.
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Oilgate! BP and All the President's Men (Except One) Seek to Contain Truth of Leak in the Gulf
Aug 03, 2010
BARATARIA, LA -- Bonnie Schumaker slowed her souped-up Cessna 180 from 130 to 50 knots so I could hold open the window for documentary film producer Bo Bodart to shoot the grim scene below us. The oil-laced air rushed in and stung our throats and eyes.
Bay Jimmy on the northeast side of Barataria Bay was full of oil. So was Bay Baptiste, Lake Grande Ecaille, and Billet Bay. Sitting next to me was Mike Roberts, a shrimper with Louisiana Bayoukeepers, who has grown up in this area. His voice crackled over the headset as I strained to hold the window. "I've fished in all these waters - everywhere you can see. It's all oiled. This is the worst I've seen. This is a heart-break..."
We followed thick streamers of black oil and ribbons of rainbow sheen from Bay Baptiste and Bay Jimmy south across Barataria Bay through Four Bayou Pass and into the Gulf of Mexico. The ocean's smooth surface glinted like molten lead in the late afternoon sun. Oil. As far as we could see: Oil.
This was July 31, Day 103 of BP's disaster and more than two weeks after BP had sealed its broken wellhead that had hemorrhaged oil into the Gulf for nearly three months. BP's latest pretend is that tropical storm Bonnie washed the oil away - or at least off the surface - so the company is busily laying off response crews and claiming damages were over-exaggerated.
Since Day 1, BP has consistently downplayed the size of its gusher and the damage it was causing to wildlife and people. This is what happens when governments leave the spiller in charge of the spill or, in this case, the criminal in charge of the crime scene. Evidence disappears as the criminal seeks to minimize its liability for damages. What should be a war on the spill becomes a war against the truth, the environment, and the injured people.
The official story emerging now from BP and most of the president's men - and now being echoed by some national media - is: the oil is gone; the danger is past and was exaggerated; the dispersants were effective in keeping oil from reaching the shore; the oil that does reach shore is mostly weathered and not toxic; and federal officials have found no unsafe levels of oil in air or water samples and no evidence of illness due to oil or dispersant use.
As my father used to say: Good story if true.
The official story does not match the reality that I saw from the Cessna or have heard from people I have met during community visits since the well was temporarily sealed - and ever since I first arrived in early May. Public health is a huge concern - and with good reason.
BP has created Frankenstein in its Gulf laboratory: an oil-dispersant chemical stew that so far has contaminated over 44,000 square miles of ocean and caused internal bleeding and hemorrhaging in workers and dolphins alike, according to Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA, who recently blew the whistle on the industry-government cover up. BP has sprayed dispersants steadily in the Gulf with Coast Guard approval from the beginning - under the sea, on the surface, offshore, near shore, in inland waters, at night, during the day - despite a public uproar to cease and desist.
The dispersants used in BP's draconian experiment contain solvents such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol. Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber. Spill responders have told me that the hard rubber impellors in their engines and the soft rubber bushings on their outboard motor pumps are falling apart and need frequent replacement. They say the plastic corks used to float the absorbent booms during skimming operations dissolve after a week of use. They say the hard epoxy resin on and below the waterline of their fiberglass boats is also dissolving and chipping away. Divers have told me that they have had to replace the soft rubber o-rings on their gear after dives in the Gulf and that the oil-chemical stew eats its way into even the Hazmat dive suits.
Given this evidence, it should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known. In Generations at Risk, medical doctor Ted Schettler and others warn that solvents can rapidly enter the human body: They evaporate in air and are easily inhaled, they penetrate skin easily, and they cross the placenta into fetuses. For example, 2-butoxyethanol is a human health hazard substance: It is a fetal toxin and it breaks down blood cells, causing blood and kidney disorders.
I suspect that the oil-chemical stew is likely the culprit behind the strange rashes reported by people across the Gulf - rashes that break out into deep blisters on legs or repeated peeling on hands. Stories accompany the rashes, stories of handling dead sea turtles, wading or swimming in the Gulf, or washing clothes of spill responders. Medical doctors are diagnosing rashes as staph infections or scabies, but the rashes are not responding to medical treatment as they would if the causation was biological instead of chemical.
In Sound Truth and Corporate Myths, I wrote of similar rashes and peeling skin experienced by Exxon Valdez spill responders, especially ones who used dispersants and other chemical solvents. Yet in the Gulf, many doctors are turning a blind eye to chemical causes, because BP insists that solvents "disappear" after only a day or two. Retired toxicologist and forensic chemist John Laseter disagrees. Laseter's long career includes evaluation of human health effects of some of the largest toxic chemical and petroleum releases into the environment in the United States and Europe. He also founded and ran Accu-Chem, a lab that analyzed blood work for criminal justice cases.
Laseter told me that solvents "solubilize" or become soluble in oil and remain a threat for up to two months. He said the oil-solvent mixture sticks on biological tissue - gills of fish, the organic film coating sand grains and raindrops - and can wreak havoc. He told me that the dispersants are "almost certainly" making the oil penetrate more deeply into the skin and could very well be causing the rashes in the Gulf. Other toxicologists confirm that dispersants amount to a "delivery system" for oil: the combination is worse for human and sea life than the oil or dispersant alone.
Yet all the president's men - the Coast Guard, OSHA, NIOSH, FDA, and the EPA (except the EPA whistleblower noted above), in keeping with the cover up, cannot seem to find any unsafe levels of oil or solvents in the air or water. But other people are.
For example, about a week after the oil started coming ashore in Alabama, the Mobile television station WKRG took samples of water and sand from Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Katrina Key, and Dauphin Island. The test was nothing fancy. The on-air reporter simply dipped a jar into the ocean and another into some surf water filling a sand pit dug by a small child. In the samples, oil was not visible in the water or the sand, but the chemist who analyzed them reported astonishingly high levels of oil ranging from 16 to 221 parts per million (ppm). Except for the Dauphin Island sample -- that one literally exploded in the lab before testing could be completed. The chemist thought maybe the exploding sample contained methane or 2-butoxyethanol.
There is also evidence of dangerous levels of oil in the air. A preliminary study commissioned in mid-July by Guardians of the Gulf, a community-based nonprofit organization in Orange Beach, Alabama, found that nightly air inversions - common in the area during the summer and fall - were trapping pollutants near the ground.
Total Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) - including the carcinogen benzene, and oil vapors - reached 85 to 108 ppm at 9:00 a.m. but rapidly dropped to zero (or nondetectable) within half an hour as the sun burned through the inversion layer. (For comparison, the federal standard for 15-minute exposure to benzene is 5 ppm.) The EPA did find unsafe levels of VOCs once in early May, but pulled much of its early data, as I reported earlier.
Such high levels could explain the bout of respiratory problems, dizziness, nausea, sore throats, headaches, and ear bleeds that I have heard about from residents and health professionals from Houma, Louisiana, to Apalachicola, Florida. Even the oil industry knows that these chemicals are unsafe. As long ago as 1948, the American Petroleum Institute confirmed, "The only absolutely safe concentration for benzene is zero."
When we landed after our 2-hour flight, our pilot told us that she sometimes has to wipe an oily reddish film off the leading edges of her plane's wings after flying over the Gulf. Hurricane Creekkeeper John Wathem documented similar oily films on planes he chartered for Gulf over-flights. Bonnie doesn't wear gloves when she wipes her plane. She showed me her hands -- red rash, blisters, and peeling palms.
If peeling palms are an indication of the oil-solvent stew, the reddish film on Bonnie's plane and others means that the stew is not only in the Gulf, it is in the rain clouds above the Gulf. And in the middle of hurricane season, this means the oil-solvent mix could rain down anywhere across the Gulf.
Why all this pretend in the Gulf by BP and all the president's men except the EPA whistleblower that oil and dispersants are not toxic? By comparison, last week in Calhoun County, Michigan, an Enbridge pipeline ruptured, spilling at least 19,500 barrels of oil. At least thirty families were temporarily relocated because of the stench and roads and beaches were closed. Health officials have warned people to stay away from the fumes and beaches, and to avoid swimming and fishing near oiled areas. "It's a very toxic and dangerous environment," Calhoun County health officer Jim Rutherford said.
If spilled oil is "toxic and dangerous" in Michigan, it's also toxic and dangerous in the Gulf. But in the Gulf, public officials have downplayed the health risk despite hard evidence of an epidemic of chemical illnesses related to, I believe, the oil-chemical stew.
The fact that the official story in the Gulf does not match what people are experiencing is more alarming to me than the oil disaster. How can our president hold BP accountable if he accepts - or worse is complicit in - the crime?
Correcting the false official story is the first step toward holding the criminal accountable to the law and lore of the land. If the government fails to hold the criminal accountable, as it did during the Exxon Valdez, then the people and environment will bear the costs of this avoidable tragedy.
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The Big Lie: BP, Governments Downplay Public Health Risk From Oil and Dispersants
Jul 07, 2010
PENSACOLA BEACH, Florida -- When Ryan Heffernan, a volunteer with Emerald Coastkeeper, noticed a bag of oily debris floating off in Santa Rosa Sound, she ran up to BP's HazMat-trained workers to ask if they would retrieve it.
"No, ma'am," one replied politely. "We can't go in the ocean. It's contaminated."
Ryan waded in and retrieved the bag. That was Wednesday, June 23, the first day visible oil hit Pensacola Beach. Ryan had been swimming off the beach the day before, as she said, "to get in my last swim before the oil hit." The trouble is that not all of the oil coming ashore is visible. Dispersed oil - tiny bubbles of oil encased in chemical dispersants - are in the water column. On Thursday Ryan was treated at a local doctor's office for skin rash on her legs.
Three days later on Pensacola Beach, I watched BP's HazMat-trained workers shovel surface oiled sand and oily debris into bags early in the morning. The workers followed the waterline like shorebirds, scurrying up the beach in front of breaking waves and moving back down with receding waters.
The late morning sun retired the workers to the shade of their tents and the job of "observing," while it brought out throngs of beach-goers -- children, parents, grandparents -- who happily plunged into the "contaminated" ocean without a second thought.
I was astounded. Why did people think the ocean was safe for swimming?
There were five HazMat tents, four front-loaders, and at least two dozen HazMat workers on the beach. HazMat workers wore yellow over-boots duct-taped to their long pants' legs to minimize risk of contact with the water. The white surf popped with visible black tar balls as it rolled towards the beach. Waves left an oily signature of tar balls on the beach, melting in the sun. The treads of my Chacos weighed down with oily sand despite trying to avoid the mess. Most people were barefoot. Hotels set up oil cleaning stations on their premises - and signs saying the water advisory (put in place after Ryan's incident) had been lifted.
What's wrong with this picture?
Lots. For starters, Ryan's story from Pensacola Beach is not an isolated incident. I have received emails and heard personal stories from Louisiana to Florida of people who have developed skin rashes and blisters from going in the ocean. People describe stings by "invisible jellyfish." Turtle patrol volunteers who walk beaches daily write of blisters and bronchitis. And then there are individuals like Sheri Allen who took her dog for a walk on a beach in Mobile Bay in May.
Sheri wrote me that her "arms and legs were burning, even after the shower. The following morning ... (there were) ... small blood blisters. By evening the blisters had begun to welt. By the fourth day, the areas had got larger and swollen." She went to see a doctor but the sores remain and they have begun to scar her arms and legs. For several days after Sherri's incident, her husband found fish kills on the beach.
William Rea, MD, who founded the Environmental Health Center-Dallas, treated a number of sick Exxon Valdez cleanup workers. He once told me, "When you have sick people and sick animals, and they are sick because of the same chemical, that's the strongest evidence possible that that chemical is a problem."
It's not just skin rashes and blisters. At community forums, I commonly hear from adults and children with persistent coughs, stuffy sinuses, headaches, burning eyes, sore throats, ear bleeds, and fatigue. These symptoms are consistent across the four Gulf states that I have visited. Further, the symptoms of respiratory problems, central nervous system distress, and skin irritation are consistent with overexposure to crude oil through the two primary routes of exposure: inhalation and skin contact.
Most distressing to me are stories about sick children. "Dose plus host makes the poison," I learned in toxicology. A small child is at risk of breathing a higher dose of contaminants per body weight than an adult. Children, pregnant women, people with compromised or stressed immune systems like cancer survivors and asthma sufferers, and African Americans are more at risk from oil and chemical exposure - the latter because they are prone to sickle cell anemia and 2-butoxyethanol can cause, or worsen, blood disorders.
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" 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.
Ryan's rash was getting better until she sat on Pensacola Beach to watch fireworks on July 4. The next day her skin erupted in fiery red burns. She is worried about her health. So are many other people along the Gulf.
Perhaps it is time for the government to protect public health first and BP's profit second.
Click here to see Riki Ott's photos.
Riki Ott, PhD, is a marine toxicologist from Alaska, volunteering in the Gulf. She has written two books on surviving the Exxon Valdez oil spill - Sound Truth and Corporate Myths on biological impact of oil to people and wildlife, and Not One Drop on emotional impact of disaster trauma and litigation to people and community. www.rikiott.com. Ott is working with Emerald Coastkeeper and others to petition the EPA to delist toxic chemical products in oil spill response.
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The Human Cost of Bush's Arctic Policy
Feb 11, 2009
Wainwright, Alaska - "We'll have to give you an Eskimo name if you like our food!" Kenneth "Kenny" Tagarook teased as he sliced another piece of frozen raw caribou meat for me with his ulu - a hand-sized, flat piece of metal with a small handle opposite the sharp, curved edge.
Kenny and his wife Ann are Inupiat ("In-OU-pe-at" or "Eskimo"). They are hosting me and Kenny's cousin Rosemary Ahtuangaruak during our visit in Wainwright. The village of 520 mostly Inupiat people lies along Alaska's North Slope over 200 miles above the Arctic Circle.
The site was settled by Kenny's ancestors over 100 years ago as Olgoonik, an Inupiaq name for "where the land slopes to the sea." The landmark bluff overlooking the Chukchi Sea is nearly indistinguishable now as the sea ice is packed in successive ridges that press firmly against the shore. Earlier, the biting cold (-39 with wind chill) had shortened our walk along the bluff.
"Did you try the bearded seal?" Rosemary asked. I picked up a marble-sized bit of dark brown meat, dried and frozen. Rich opaque oil coated my fingers. The seal meat was dense and delicious. "I love our food," said Rosemary, her black eyes sparkling and her mouth full.
The food is part of the culture and the culture is why Rosemary and I are visiting Wainwright and other Inupiat villages along the Arctic Ocean. Wainwright has been spared the oil and gas development - and cultural impacts - of villages to the east near Prudhoe Bay.
But that may soon change. Forty million acres of the Chukchi Sea may soon be leased to oil and gas development along with another 33 million acres of the neighboring Beaufort Sea. Together, these lease sales open the entire Arctic Ocean to oil and gas development.
The Chukchi Sea teems with sea life. In spring and fall, bowhead and beluga whales migrate along the coast. The vast ocean is a rich feeding area for gray, humpback, and fin whales, walrus and ringed, bearded, and spotted seals. Millions of migratory birds from across the U.S., central and South America, and even Antarctica rear their young in the brief Arctic summer. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas support 20 percent of the world's polar bears.
The Inupiat people lovingly refer to the ocean as "our garden." But there are problems in the "garden" in the Beaufort Sea to the east.
Rosemary lives in Nuiqsut ("new-WICK-sit"), a village over 600 miles to the east of Wainwright and near Prudhoe Bay. The ever-expanding oilfields with their associated airplane and helicopter traffic, airports, roads, pipelines, gravel mines, noise, and flares have altered the landscape and the ways the animals use the land. Seismic tests push migratory caribou farther south, away from Nuiqsut, and migratory bowhead whales further north, out to sea. Causeways and gravel islands divert migratory fish away from the coast. Loss of traditional foods means loss of a way of life - and loss of a human right to protect a culture.
Kenny and Ann worry about what is happening in Nuiqsut at the northern end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline - and what happened in Prince William Sound at the southern end of the pipeline. Oil from the Exxon Valdez is still buried on the beaches of the Sound and most of the wildlife injured by the spill 20 years ago still has not fully recovered.
Twenty years without traditional foods is unthinkable to Inupiat people like Kenny and Ann, yet Wainwright is slated to become the next Nuiqsut - an industrial complex - and oil spills come oil development.
Large-scale industrial development is simply not compatible with large-scale wilderness and the Inupiat culture. We can have one or the other, but not both in the same place. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently indicated that the offshore oil-drilling plan left by the Bush administration will likely be scrapped. The plan opens the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts for drilling, Salazar observed.
Let us not forget that it also opens the entire Arctic coast to drilling.
Salazar said, "There are places that are appropriate for exploration and development and there are place that are not."
Surely the Arctic Ocean is a place where oil and gas development are not appropriate. Exxon managed to recover only 3 to 11 percent of the 11 to 38 million gallons of oil that spilled in Prince William Sound. The Arctic Ocean is an even less forgiving environment with its four months of darkness, sea ice, bitter temperatures, and storms. There is no proven technology to clean up or recover spilled oil in broken ice. None. Dispersants don't work in cold water with Prudhoe Bay crude.
What is at stake is a culture that has survived for over ten thousand years in one of the harshest environments on the planet. The culture has survived because the people could live off the land and sea. Take away the food and the people will vanish from the land.
Why should the Inupiat way of life be sacrificed for our oil dependency? The Arctic should be off limits to oil and gas development.
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