Scientist Finds Gulf Bottom Still Oily, Dead; 'We're Poisoned. We're Sick.'

"We're Poisoned. We're Sick."

February 15, 2011

TruthOut - Residents who live along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, all the way from Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, to well into western Florida, continue to tell me of acute symptoms they attribute to ongoing exposure to toxic chemicals being released from BP's crude oil and the toxic Corexit dispersants used to sink it.

Shirley Tillman from Pass Christian, Mississippi, and former BP Vessels of Opportunity oil cleanup worker wrote me recently:

"You can't even go to the store without seeing sick people! You can hear them talking to people and they think they have the flu or a virus. I saw a girl that works at a local store yesterday that had to leave work because she was so sick! Others, throughout the entire store were hacking & coughing. It's crazy that this has been allowed to happen to all of us!"

Oil continues to wash ashore. That which was already there, usually in the form of tar balls or mats of tar, is being uncovered by the weather.

Four of the fragile barrier islands of Mississippi have had four million pounds of oil removed, thus far. The embattled coastline never gets a break. However, BP cleanup crews, who returned to work the first week of January after an 11-day break, removed another 11,000 pounds of oil from Petit Bois Island Thursday, January 6, and another 3,800 pounds from Horn Island.

"The northerly wind seems to do the uncovering [of the oil]," a cleanup supervisor said. "Southerly winds appear to be covering it up."

"This is the biggest cover-up in the history of America," Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser told reporters on a boat trip he took with Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials last week.

Nungesser was enraged by finding vast areas of Louisiana marsh soiled with oil, while no protective boom or cleanup workers were within sight.

"It's like you're in bed with BP," Nungesser fumed at the officials. "You cover up for BP."

As BP's stock price continues to improve, the Coast Guard, NOAA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Environmental Protection Agency all continue to go to great lengths to convince the public, particularly those living along the Coast, that the air, water and seafood are perfectly safe.

Denise Rednour, from Long Beach, Mississippi, has been suffering symptoms of toxic chemical exposure for months.

"I have pain in my stomach, stabbing pains, in isolated areas," she told me. "Now I have a bruising rash all around my stomach. I've had shingles before, and that was like a rash ... but this looks like bleeding under the skin. The sharp stabbing pain is all over my abdomen where this discoloration is. It's in my armpits and around my breasts. I have this dry hacking cough, my sinuses are swelling up - not snotty nose or congestion, but the inside of my nose is swelling to where it's almost closed. I also have an insatiable thirst. This has been going on, almost constantly, for about 2 months. It's never gone away entirely. Sometimes I feel a little better, but it's always with me."

She recently had her blood tested for chemicals that are present in BP's crude oil and dispersants. Her blood tested positive.

"I tested very high for most of the chemicals," she told me on January 9. "I'm still having my symptoms and am not feeling better. I'm feeling worse, in fact."

The chemicals in her blood include Benzene, Ethylbenzene, Hexane, 2- and 3-methylpentane and M,p-Xylene. Ethylbenzene is a form of benzene present in the body when it begins to break down; it is also present in BP's crude oil. M,p-Xylene, is a clear, colorless, flammable liquid that is refined from crude oil and is used as a solvent. Ethylbenzene, m,p-Xylene and Hexane correlate to the volatile organic chemicals in the BP crude oil.

Independent blood testing by environmental groups and independent scientists along the Gulf is finding exceedingly high concentrations of these chemicals in people's veins ... people who live near the Coast, former BP cleanup workers and even one man who lives 100 miles from the coast ... everyone is testing positive with BP's toxic chemicals in their blood stream.

Many of the chemicals present in the oil and dispersants are known to cause headaches; nausea; vomiting; kidney damage; altered renal functions; irritation of the digestive tract; lung damage; burning pain in the nose and throat; coughing; pulmonary edema; cancer; lack of muscle coordination; dizziness; confusion; irritation of the skin, eyes, nose, and throat; difficulty breathing; delayed reaction time; memory difficulties; stomach discomfort; liver and kidney damage; unconsciousness; tiredness/lethargy; irritation of the upper respiratory tract; and hematological disorders

"We're poisoned, we're sick," Denise added, furiously. "We've lost our livelihoods, we have nothing to look forward to. We're destitute and depressed. I think everybody is walking around with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], and the devastation continues in the Gulf. Yesterday I was at the beach, and the chemical smell would knock you over. There was oil sheen everywhere, tar balls, crews walking the beach picking up buckets full of them."

George Parker, a commercial fisherman in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, wrote me:

"Dahr I wish to express our thanks to you for keeping this in the public eye. Since the alleged end of Deepwater Horizon fiasco, the 'all clear' was pronounced, and the truth is slipping away and the public is being put to sleep again ... The 'all clear' has been sounded, yet they may as well be the Emperors New Clothes, because something is very wrong here. Something horrible is happening. And I fear for those on the coast but also those that consume what may very well be what Agent Orange was to Vietnam, Corexit is to America. Intuitively, I fear that we are unleashing a monster."

George and I exchanged emails when it became clear that the FDA and NOAA were pushing to open Gulf waters to fishing, despite inadequate sampling and testing of the seafood.

This inspired him to write the following:

"As a commercial fisherman, by conscience I voluntarily left the North Atlantic, as well as Alaskan waters because of the overfishing and pollution of the crab, cod, and scallop industries. Back home here on the Gulf coast waters I have seen first-hand too many times the impact of government that concerns itself with only the value of tax revenues derived from industries that are known health risks. Seafood is one of them.

"For decades seafood has been unsafe for human consumption throughout the North Atlantic, the Atlantic seaboard, and especially the Chesapeake Bay areas due to heavy metals, pesticides, sewage and agriculture run-off. Yet, with this in mind, the bureaucracies that regulate these have almost always only concerned themselves with economics. Concerns that lay offs and lost revenue seem to almost always dictate the choices that the so-called servants of the people follow. Money first and foremost, health concerns last. This applies to the consumer as well. If it isn't dead in your face, then perhaps, what's the big deal? So your kids have two heads, well you can't blame us because the government said it's safe. Years down the road this mentality lends a great deal to the term plausible deniability.

"Someone with big clout that extends not only into the Federal government, but into local administrations to the point that it is most difficult to get any of our local officials, or news agencies for that matter, to comment on these alarming reports that so many people are ill and remain ill and have the very same symptoms. Nevertheless, what do you hear from the local, state, and federal governments? The 'all clear' was sounded, seafood is safe, let's promote our tourism and fishing industries to keep up our tax revenues ... this song has been sung way too many times. So thanks, Dahr, for your caring, thanks for keeping this story alive. We are with you. We're broke, and sick, but with you, nonetheless."

While the ecology, biology and humanity that call the area of the Gulf of Mexico their home continue to suffer and die, the administrator of BP's $20 billion compensation fund, Kenneth Feinberg, said on December 31 that he anticipates half that amount will be sufficient to cover claims for economic losses. Feinberg is being paid by BP to "administer" the fund.

Scientist Finds Gulf Bottom Still Oily, Dead

February 20, 2011

AP – Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a top scientist's video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn't degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor.

That report is at odds with a recent report by the BP spill compensation czar that said nearly all will be well by 2012.

At a science conference in Washington Saturday, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia aired early results of her December submarine dives around the BP spill site. She went to places she had visited in the summer and expected the oil and residue from oil-munching microbes would be gone by then. It wasn't.

"There's some sort of a bottleneck we have yet to identify for why this stuff doesn't seem to be degrading," Joye told the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Washington.

Her research and those of her colleagues contrasts with other studies that show a more optimistic outlook about the health of the gulf, saying microbes did great work munching the oil.

"Magic microbes consumed maybe 10 percent of the total discharge, the rest of it we don't know," Joye said, later adding: "there's a lot of it out there."

The head of the agency in charge of the health of the Gulf said Saturday that she thought that "most of the oil is gone." And a Department of Energy scientist, doing research with a grant from BP from before the spill, said his examination of oil plumes in the water column show that microbes have done a "fairly fast" job of eating the oil. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientist Terry Hazen said his research differs from Joye's because they looked at different places at different times.

Joye's research was more widespread, but has been slower in being published in scientific literature.

In five different expeditions, the last one in December, Joye and colleagues took 250 cores of the sea floor and travelled across 2,600 square miles. Some of the locations she had been studying before the oil spill on April 20 and said there was a noticeable change. Much of the oil she found on the sea floor — and in the water column — was chemically fingerprinted, proving it comes from the BP spill. Joye is still waiting for results to show other oil samples she tested are from BP's Macondo well.

She also showed pictures of oil-choked bottom-dwelling creatures. They included dead crabs and brittle stars — starfish like critters that are normally bright orange and tightly wrapped around coral. These brittle stars were pale, loose and dead. She also saw tube worms so full of oil they suffocated.

"This is Macondo oil on the bottom," Joye said as she showed slides. "This is dead organisms because of oil being deposited on their heads."

Joye said her research shows that the burning of oil left soot on the sea floor, which still had petroleum products. And even more troublesome was the tremendous amount of methane from the BP well that mixed into the Gulf and was mostly ignored by other researchers.

Joye and three colleagues last week published a study in Nature Geoscience that said the amount of gas injected into the Gulf was the equivalent of between 1.5 and 3 million barrels of oil.

"The gas is an important part of understanding what happened," said Ian MacDonald of Florida State University.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco told reporters Saturday that "it's not a contradiction to say that although most of the oil is gone, there still remains oil out there."

Earlier this month, Kenneth Feinberg, the government's oil compensation fund czar, said based on research he commissioned he figured the Gulf of Mexico would almost fully recover by 2012 — something Joye and Lubchenco said isn't right.

"I've been to the bottom. I've seen what it looks like with my own eyes. It's not going to be fine by 2012," Joye told The Associated Press. "You see what the bottom looks like, you have a different opinion."

NOAA chief Lubchenco said "even though the oil degraded relatively rapidly and is now mostly but not all gone, damage done to a variety of species may not become obvious for years to come."

Lubchenco Saturday also announced the start of a Gulf restoration planning process to get the Gulf back to the condition it was on Apr. 19, the day before the spill. That program would eventually be paid for BP and other parties deemed responsible for the spill. This would be separate from an already begun restoration program that would improve all aspects of the Gulf, not just the oil spill, but has not been funded by the government yet, she said.

The new program, which is part of the Natural Resources Damage Assessment program, is part of the oil spill litigation — or out-of-court settlement — in which the polluters pay for overall damage to the ecosystem and efforts to return it to normal. This is different than paying compensation to people and businesses directly damaged by the spill.

The process will begin with public meetings all over the region.

~~~

And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.
And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.
And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer;
And there was given unto him much incense,
That he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.
And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand.
And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth:
And there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.
And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.
The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth:
And the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea:
And the third part of the sea became blood;
And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died;
And the third part of the ships were destroyed.
And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp,
And it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood;
And many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten,
And the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened,
And the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.
And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice,
Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices
Of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!
(Revelation Chapter 8)