This study is crucial to understanding how chemical dispersants and exposure to UV light -- both factors that can crack hydrocarbons -- act on crude and affect PAH levels and bioavailability of the toxins created in an oil spill. The "deployed dispersant" study is pertinant in the BP spill, because they sprayed so much of the chemical onto the water's surface.
Even though many of us have Disaster Fatigue, for scores of hundreds of local Gulf Residents, this BP Crisis is very much their recurring daily Nightmare.
BP Oil Spill Compensation Fund Not Living Up to Promise
NewsInferno.com, News that matters! -- Sep 10, 2010
In an interview with USA Today, Feinberg promised a better response times as his staff weeds through old claims. "I’ve inherited a huge number of claims that have never been processed that need to be processed, especially business claims," he said. Such claims, he said, were placed on a "side track" by BP when it was handling the process.
According to USA Today, more than 46,000 people have filed claims since Feinberg took charge. By September 8, his staff had paid 10,252 claims for nearly $80 million. Most claims paid are small, with payouts of $5,000 or less, USA Today said.
So Ken Feinberg has inherited an extensive paper trail of bureaucratic procrastination;
While the Gulf Coast Residents, simply keep reaping the BP whirlwind ...
I, for one, hope that this is true, and will be further substantiated:
Study: Petroleum-eating microbes significantly reduced gulf oil plume
David Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer -- Tue, August 24, 2010
Petroleum-eating bacteria - which had dined for eons on oil seeping naturally through the seafloor - proliferated in the cloud of oil that drifted underwater for months after the April 20 accident. They not only outcompeted fellow microbes, they each ramped up their own internal metabolic machinery to digest the oil as efficiently as possible.
The result was a nature-made cleanup crew capable of reducing that reduced the amount of oil amounts in the undersea "plume" by half about every three days, according to research published online Tuesday by the journal Science.
The findings, by a team of scientists led by Terry C. Hazen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California [...]
Former BP worker speaks out.
http://www.youtube.com/...
I wonder what he's afraid of, still ?
Apparently, BP runs a tight ship -- perhaps it's best to not cross them ?
Recommend the BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 72
I've written about a couple of diaries in the past few days regarding the heavy use of corexit and the issue of where the animals have gone in the Gulf regarding the gusher.
Both are relevant and important and touch on two of the major issues that will be ongoing for many years in the Gulf coast, health issues for the residents and the environment.
As the EPA continues to defend the use of dispersants, the questions have more to do with full disclosure, the amount of dispersants used and the long term consequences, from the food chain to the health of residents and workers.
Both those diaries were met with some skepticism, healthy at times and hostile at others. Which is fine, this is a community and when you write things here, it is open to comments and discussion.
Please rec the BP Catastrophe Liveblog Mothership: 70
The headlines are piling up and the evidence is frightening to say the least even though the EPA is saying everything's fine, Citing Tests, E.P.A. Says It Was Wise to Use Oil Dispersant.
Spraying dispersants on oily water in the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t make the mixture any more toxic than the water was with Louisiana sweet crude alone, the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday.
Paul Anastas, the agency’s assistant administrator for research and development, said that the toxicity of the mix of oil and dispersant sprayed to combat the gulf oil spill was generally in the range of moderate, comparable to the effects of the oil.
Just yesterday Congressman Markey is asking if more dispersants were used than BP disclosed to the public. There have been a lot of questions surrounding the use of dispersants, from their level of toxicity and the usefulness to them in a spill of this size.
I wrote about the mix of using booming and dispersants and how people actually questioned doing both at the same time (although there has been a lot of talk as well how booming was bust and not done very well either). But rounding up dispersed oil in booms makes no sense. The whole operation by BP seemed rather, well, highly questionable. The technology for drilling had come a long way, but not the technology for dealing with oil spills and the health of the workers for cleaning them up.
I think "Breaking" is the correct adjacent ...
BP offers one-off payouts to stem Gulf oil spill lawsuits
Lump-sum compensation offered in return for waiving the right to sue,
but uncertainty remains for those indirectly affected
Tim Webb, guardian.co.uk -- August 1, 2010
BP will begin its legal offensive this month to cap its liabilities from the Gulf of Mexico disaster by offering those affected one-off compensation payouts in return for them waiving the right to sue.
[...]
The fund does not cap BP's liabilities at $20bn. But privately the company believes that it will not have to pay out anywhere near this sum. BP has hired a battery of lawyers to protect itself, and so far it has paid out $261m in claims.
[...]
According to BP, 1.8m gallons of dispersant have been pumped into the Gulf. Scientists say that the resulting high toxicity levels could harm marine life for years to come.
Hmmm ... Seems BP is a bit worried about the long-term effects of that 1.8 Millions of gallons of Corexit, they used -- to help make that spill problem disappear?
OH NOES!
Just when you thought the worse was over ...
BP to scale back some oil response units, new leader pledges to stay for long haul
by Doug Mouton / Northshore Bureau Chief
wwltv.com -- July 30, 2010
How much oil is in the Gulf now is up for debate. Several Louisiana leaders, including St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis have argued that million of gallons of oil are underwater, waiting to surface.
"We haven't found that," [Bob] Dudley [new BP CEO] said.
Dudley said six ships and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are working to locate underwater oil.
"It's a big hunt going on right now," Dudley said. "It's going to keep going on."
Hey BOB! -- MAYBE you haven't "found it" because of 1.8 Million Gallons of Toxic Dispersants you managed to spray -- Kept much of it Underwater, eh?
They'll find ALL that missing Oil -- just give them some more time ... that's all they ask ...
These are three of the cheerful passages in the article. If you've never read the whole thing I'd recommend it...
The Delusion Revolution: We're on the Road to Extinction and in Denial
By Robert Jensen
Imagine that you are riding comfortably on a sleek train. You look out the window and see that not too far ahead the tracks end abruptly and that the train will derail if it continues moving ahead. You suggest that the train stop immediately and that the passengers go forward on foot. This will require a major shift in everyone's way of traveling, of course, but it appears to you to be the only realistic option; to continue barreling forward is to court catastrophic consequences. But when you propose this course of action, others who have grown comfortable riding on the train say, "Well, we like the train, and arguing that we should get off is not realistic."
I almost choked on my breakfast cereal when I read this headline in the Times Picayune today: Senator gently scolds EPA's Director(for that headline today there is no online link posted yet, so I included a link from basically the same article yesterday). Now I didn't see the entire video of that questioning, but I did see a compilation of remarks both from Senator Mikulski and Lisa Jackson. "Gentle" is a value ascribed to the interaction that I wouldn't necessarily use. I will admit though, it could have been a lot stronger from Mikulski and company. There is also a grilling, at the same hearing, of a NOAA official that is worth seeing.
If you aren't pissed off enough already with the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf, watching this news report from over the weekend might force you to let out a few more expletives. The video is genuine but still unbelievable.
Via WKRG in Mobile, Alabama-Pensacola, Florida.
BP is the gift that will continue to screw the Gulf Coast region by poisoning them while continuing to cover up the oil spill.
The EPA is the gift that continues to look LAME, against the power house foreign company called BP.
The government continues to be quasi in charge, while attempting to look NOT IN CHARGE.
Put these three together the gifts that keep screwing the Gulf Coast Region.
Glenn Ford with Black Agenda couldn't have made it any clearer: leaving BP in charge of the oil spill response, and make no mistake, they are in charge, despite Coast Guard declarations to the contrary, has left the four gulf states, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, an enforced, corporate state in the midst of a major catastrophe. Creating and finding ways to fight back are key here. Let's consider the implications:
Perhaps you heard about the recent EPA Press Release, regarding latest Toxicity Testing results for Dispersants. Depending on which sound bite you heard, it almost sounded like Corexit got a clean bill of health.
Confused? I was too. And since I had previously written a well-received diary,
Corexit Toxicity Tests not so hot, When Mixed with Oil
by jamess -- May 30, 2010
which dove into the Toxicity Data, that the EPA originally cited as credible only 2 months ago, I figured I should try to figure out what was up with the 'New and Improved' Dispersant Testing.
What follows is my assessment of what's happening now, including some relevant links.
I'll try to keep it brief. (I hate long diaries, lol)
A philosophical question for you. If no reporter is ever allowed to speak or meet with any of the many oil spill clean-up workers about the medical treatment they may or may not be receiving at a Federal Clinic, much less visit said clinic, do they really exist? And by that I mean oil spill clean-up workers in general, sick or not:
Watching the BP oil disaster unfold, lurking in the back of my mind has been a disturbing realization that the American people have few options for trustable protection -- from corporations or from our elected government -- when it comes to something like health safety after exposure to the toxic mixture of oil, methane and Corexit and its vapors, at sea, in the wetlands or on the beach. When one drills down, as it were, one finds a curious disingenuousness that can be described as, well, Oilwellian.
Who can we trust?
Let's start with the NYTimes 6-18-10 report that BP's toxic testing firm, the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (CTEH), had a questionable record in prior chemical exposures before it became BP's main source of testing on health effects after the Mocando blowout disaster:
After a million gallons of oil spilled on a Louisiana town in 2005, after a flood of toxic coal ash smothered central Tennessee in 2008 and after defective Chinese drywall began plaguing Florida homeowners, the same firm [CTEH] was on the scene -- saying everything was fine.
