Independent Tests Show Dangerous Levels of Oil, Chemicals in Gulf
August 19th, 2010by Glynn Wilson
A citizens group conducting its own water samples in the Gulf of Mexico released results today showing dangerous levels of oil and chemicals in Naples and St. Petersberg Florida coastal waters.
They found 1 parts per million of oil and grease.
Other test results from Cotton Bayou, near Orange Beach, Alabama, near the Alabama-Florida state line, showed 13 parts per million of 2-butoxyethanol, the chemical BP supposedly stopped using in the new Corexit 9500 formula, according to Allison Helen Hendricks, a medical adviser with TestingTheWater.org.
“Where do the people think all the millions upon millions of gallons of oil have gone? Only because the government allowed BP to push it deep into the water column and to break it up into smaller, even more deadly particles with chemicals, doesn’t mean it suddenly vanished,” the group says on its Website.
“To the contrary, this process has accelerated its diffusion to the shorelines, and into the air and rain via evaporation cycles, where it will do greater harm to those gullible enough to believe the government, BP, the tourist and real estate industry pundits and media, that ‘it hasn’t hit us yet’ because the sacrosanct tarball of ultimate truth hasn’t been confirmed by a team of experts to have washed up to your shores.”
Its VERY important that people understand that BECAUSE you can’t see the oil in the water or on the shoreline it is MORE DANGEROUS than if you can see it, because it has been micronized by a solvent (Corexit 9500) which as a bioaccumulator will accelerate the absorption of deadly hydrocarbons into animal life (that’s us too) exponentially.
One study published in 2004 showed that Corexit dispersant increased the absorption of hydrocarbons into test fish between 6-1,100 times more readily than the oil alone.
“Only because BP has won the PR war by keeping the visible oil off our beaches, this does not mean that what we can’t see isn’t there,” she says. “In fact, because these particles are so small and combined with a chemical solvent, its guaranteed to do far more harm to our bodies.”
Please watch the report below to learn more, and consider that according to the EPA’s own toxicological assessment levels of oil in the water as low as 10 ppm are toxic enough to kill 50 percent of the test fish within 96 hours, while oil mixed with dispersant makes it 3.5 times more toxic at 2.61 ppm to kill 50 percent of the test fish.
More info from this report on this Facebook page.
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Tags: Chemicals in Gulf, Independent Tests Show Dangerous Levels of Oil
August 19th, 2010 at 10:08 am
All the more reason for the webpress and others to keep the heat on BP. Contemporary American culture is that of the very-short-term memory. As the obvious oil is cleaned up, and the various Gulf coast tourist agencies advertise, the collective impulse will be to forget about it, that everything is returning to normal.
One part per million, as you point out, is not anything like “normal” and is exceptionally toxic. People should not be swimming in the Gulf for some time to come. People should not be eating Gulf seafood, again for some time to come. (Apologies to Birmingham area seafood restaurants, but that’s the way it is.) Ways to introduce additional clean up measures (at BP’s expense), such as oil-eating mircoorganisms, should be implemented as soon as possible.
Whether this message gets out effectively or not, again, is dependent on the webpress. This report should be circulated as widely as possible, which I am sure Glynn is doing.
The mess continues.
August 19th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Tonight we had a local long-time BP employee talk at our activist meeting. (we are on the Atlantic coast of SC.) Granted they use powder, I think tulene (bad sh*t) to make plastic bottles and aren’t in the drilling business, but he did avoid the hard questions by claiming not to know about the topics averted. He reassured us that the oil was broken up into little particles but corexit was unknown to him. That is nearly impossible to believe. If that is actually true, then the higher-ups in BP are keeping their own people in the dark and they don’t do independent research. We did get to plant seeds about the toxic stew coming around the Florida loop and up the coast. A coworker that had been to the Gulf to work (they rotate for 2 weeks at a time) did not speak or offer any comments. He is the one who should have been speaking and answering the Qs. He had a powerpoint presentation but forgot the cable so he had to talk more than he may have planned. My assessment? How could he NOT know about corexit? Since BP Spread the corexit, he was covering for the company and covering his ass.