The off-shore drilling issue is not just about pretty beaches. The debate should also take up many issues including pollution of oceanic and seafood with heavy metals. It’s a more complicated issue and one that is harder to address in sound bits but has substantial health implications.
I’m not an expert on this topic. I hope scientists who do have expertise will join this discussion.
The New York Times (2008) notes that
Not all scientists are convinced that mercury at the levels regularly found in fish causes health problems. And many researchers as well as seafood-industry advocates believe that the benefits of eating fish far outweigh the risk from mercury. But a panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences reported in 2000 that 60,000 children were born each year exposed to levels of methylmercury — the main variety found in fish — that could cause neurological and learning problems.
In another 2008 article the NYT reports that
In the past few years, several studies have concluded that elevated mercury levels may be associated not only with neurological problems but with cardiovascular disease among adults as well.
Offshore oil rigs discharge drilling mud. The concentration of mercury is substantially higher in areas near offshore oil rigs.
You may not know that thousands of pounds of Mercury are being dumped into the seas by off-shore rigs in the form of the Bariete--the oil that lubricate the drill bits.
The prize-winning journalism of Ben Raines points to the the extensive debate about the degree to which the mercury from these lubricating oils enters the food chain. Needless to say, the Bush administration does not encourage the open discussion of this issue.
In March, EPA director Christine Todd Whitman wrote U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, and assured him that the agency's Gulf Ecology Division lab conducted studies in the 1980s proving that mercury dumped around oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico was not contaminating fish.
Officials with EPA now acknowledge the statement was "inaccurate," and that none of the three studies referred to in Whitman's letter were conducted by the EPA's Gulf Ecology Division lab or even by EPA scientists.
Link.
But even if the bariete could be given a clean bill of health, there is still an issue of the churning of mud around the drill rigs. Vast populations of fish and other sea creatures cluster near the drill rigs to feed on the organic material that is churned up. This disrupted material contains a great deal of mercury that comes originally from rainwater.
In the Gulf of Mexico, fishermen will work as close as possible to the oil rigs to take advantage of the concentration of fish in these areas.
A great deal of mercury in the seas comes from contaminated rainwater related to from cold-burning electrical plants and other industrial sources. Much of that mercury will eventually settle into the sad and mud on the ocean floor and will functionally become less available to enter the food chain. However, when it is churned up by the drills, it is again head toward our plates via the fish.
There are many other there other issues related to drilling that I’m not going to tackle today but should not escape our attention. Jerome has given us a nice start on those.