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Environmental scientist Wilma Subra, former vice-chair of the EPA National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology, is all over the news this week, and she's raising a ruckus.
She reports that each of eight Gulf Coast residents and BP clean-up workers she tested for volatile solvents had toxic levels in their bloodstreams.
All eight individuals tested had Ethylbenzene and m,p-Xylene in their blood in excess of the NHANES 95th Percentile.
...
Ethylbenzene, m,p-Xylene and Hexane are volatile organic chemicals that are present in the BP Crude Oil. The blood of all three females and five males had chemicals that are found in the BP Crude Oil.
A tweet from sprhoto on her report said:
Clearly, BP will will spin this as nutrient additives to their blood.
Subra's also mighty troubled about the fact that the NOAA and the FDA have altered their standards:
Subra’s biggest immediate concern is that the seafood coming from the Gulf may not be safe and that the federal agencies, specifically the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have raised the allowable amounts of harmful chemicals in the fish they test as a way to put fishermen back to work in the Gulf and to restore confidence in the seafood market.
...
In June, says Subra, while the spill was unfolding, "the FDA, in association with NOAA, raised the acceptable levels of PAH [Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons], without providing a rationale for why."
"Here’s part of its statement in the Protocol for Interpretation and Use of Sensory Testing and Analytical Chemistry Results for Re-Opening Oil-Impacted Areas Closed to Seafood Harvesting, published June 18, 2010: ‘The new numbers were developed specifically for the unprecedented Deepwater Horizon Oil spill event and will not necessarily be applicable after all fisheries closed due to oil contamination are re-opened for safe harvest. Levels of concern and other factors for any subsequent oil spill event would be independently evaluated based on case-specific information.' "
...
Subra’s complaints go bigger: "There is no testing for dispersants. In addition, the calculations of consumption quantity are based on things like four shrimp per meal. Who in Louisiana, or elsewhere, eats just four shrimp at a meal? Which begs another issue: Allowing more chemicals to exist in the seafood that is taken from the Gulf most powerfully impacts those who eat it most often ... the residents of the Gulf."
The bottom line, says Subra, is that "the concentrations of PAHs in seafood, based on the FDA acceptable levels, are inadequate to protect the health of seafood consumers."
NOAA (No Oil At All, per our own peraspera) administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco, of course, defends their methods and standards. And Subra's not alone in finding that hard to swallow.
Dr. William Sawyer, a Florida-based toxicologist hired by a New Orleans law firm to look at test results of water and seafood samples, says seafood safety cannot be guaranteed using the government's tests. "Absolutely not, especially with respect to Louisiana shrimp."
A senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Gina Solomon, concurs. On September 21, she urged federal officials to undertake "more rigorous" testing. She claims: "NOAA only used data from 12 samples of shrimp, consisting of 73 individual shrimp for its evaluation. That’s just too small," she says, "for an area the size of Connecticut."
Lubchenco reveals her true motives in her reply: "The Gulf seafood taken from these waters is safe to eat," and "is another signal to tourists the northern Gulf is open for business."
An LA Times article on the same subject quotes yet another scientist:
...Susan Shaw, a marine toxicologist and director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute in Blue Hill, Maine:[...] "It’s an improvement for the agencies to have a tissue test for dispersant," Shaw said, but "it’s been six months. How could possibly take this long to develop this test?"
Moreover, DOSS is only one of hundreds of compounds formed by the mixture of seawater, oil and the two flavors of Correxit dispersant used on the spill, according to Shaw.
Perhaps most troubling to Shaw is the inability of independent scientists to verify the efficacy of the methods used by NOAA and the FDA.
For example, Shaw said, it’s not known in what parts of the gulf or where in the water column fish were collected for sampling. "We don’t have transparency in the data. We don’t have their sampling plan," Shaw said.
The Times provides a link to the FDA's press release on the test protocols, and a link sent by a NOAA spokesperson, after the article appeared, to the Dispersant Test Results to demonstrate that "there is full transparency to the data at issue."
In yet another article,
[...]Government offices today claimed that seafood from the Gulf is basically safe to consume, based on the results from their latest battery of tests[...] You gonna eat that? Companies responsible for the environmental disaster spilled about 5 million barrels of oil, accidentally. They poured about 2 million gallons of oil dispersants into the Gulf waters on purpose, though. The dispersants were supposed to break up the wildlife-choking slicks into droplets that could be more easily digested by oil-eating bacteria. Or at least, they’d make the water look more like water and less like tar while the cameras were flying overhead.
At the time of the spill, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) sent scientists to the Gulf to help with the oil spill cleanup. Even that federal office knew nothing about the dispersants’ likely impact on sea life or humans. USGS director Maria McNutt admitted to her office’s ignorance at last week’s 2010 PopTech conference.
By May, the St. Petersburg Times reported, there were still no federal standards for how much dispersant could be present in seafood consumed by humans, a detail the paper confirmed with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
So why all the recent fuss, after a relatively quite period on the subject? From an article in English Al Jazeera:
According to [chemist Bob Naman, who works for Analytical Chemical Testing Lab in Mobile, Alabama, poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from this toxic mix are making people sick. PAHs contain compounds that have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic.
Fisherman across the four states most heavily affected by the oil disaster - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida - have reported seeing BP spray dispersants from aircraft and boats offshore.
"The dispersants are being added to the water and are causing chemical compounds to become water soluble, which is then given off into the air, so it is coming down as rain, in addition to being in the water and beaches of these areas of the Gulf," says Naman, who, who has been trying to isolate the chemical markers of Corexit.
"I’m scared of what I'm finding. These cyclic compounds intermingle with the Corexit [dispersants] and generate other cyclic compounds that aren’t good. Many have double bonds, and many are on the EPA's danger list. This is an unprecedented environmental catastrophe."
[M]edical 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 (in Corexit) is a human health hazard substance; it is a fetal toxin and it breaks down blood cells, causing blood and kidney disorders."
Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin, and eye contact. Health impacts include headaches, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitization, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, genetic mutations, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular damage.
You can read the symptoms that are turning up in Gulf residents and workers -- and they are horrifying -- but the precautions being taken by the military may be just as alarming:
Even the federal government has taken precautions for its employees. US military officials decided to reroute training flights in the Gulf region in order to avoid oil and dispersant tainted-areas.
Wilma Subra explains that the exposure has gone on for months, seeing evidence in patients of "liver damage, kidney damage, and damage to the nervous system. So the presence of these chemicals in the blood indicates exposure." She also found evidence present in "coastal soil sediment, wetlands, and in crab, oyster and mussel tissues."
*****
Not satisfied with poisoning Gulf residents alone, BP has a new means of showing reckless disregard for human life.
According to the toxic watchdog organization Basel Action Network (BAN), the US-flagged oil tanker named Prince William Sound, which was built in 1975 and is currently in a BP shipping depot in Malaysia, likely contains toxic wastes such as asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other hazardous substances.
There's concern the tanker will be sent to Pakistan, India, or Bangladesh, typical "shipbreaker" countries, where it would threaten the health of the workers who toil in the thriving industry of dismantling out of service ships by hand, to say nothing of the likely environmental impact.
Potential explosions, accidents and disease from exposure to toxic substances are widely expected to threaten the poor laborers at ship breaking yards if the US government does not take steps to avoid such potential disasters.
The move comes as the United States Maritime Administration (MARAD) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have yet to authorize the foreign scrapping of the ship as concerns are mounting that the responsible bodies could violate the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) or other environmental laws.
"BP is proving once again a callous disregard for people and the environment," said BAN's Green Ship Recycling Campaign Director, Colby Self.
*****
There's some mean-spirited solace in the fact that BP is trailing its competitors in profit margin: ING oil and gas analyst
Jason Kenney said, "accounting for the disaster is likely to take several years."
"On the clean numbers, it's unfortunate that BP had such a good third quarter last year, because downstream was bouncing back and upstream delivering too. This makes it look worse in comparison, but it will not have done badly."
BP's results will be the first major public appearance for its new chief executive, Bob Dudley, who took over at the beginning of October. But some institutional investors remain unconvinced of his ability to redefine the company after such a major shock.
"We regret the fact that Tony Hayward has gone," said one top-20 shareholder, who has met Mr Dudley several times since he was appointed chief executive. "We're not sure Dudley has the vision to take BP and shrink it down into a really fantastic company. We think it needs to sell Azerbaijan or Angola and lots of downstream. But the company is still clinging on to these at the moment."
...
"The path to rehabilitation post-Macondo and Bob Dudley's new strategic direction are the key to performance rather than third quarter earnings," said analysts at Citigroup.
*****
MMS rig inspectors, it turns out, knew next to nothing about the processes they were responsible for overseeing.
Commission co-chairman William Reilly said Monday that he was alarmed to see interviews and online surveys conducted by the Interior Department's inspector general in which rig inspectors professed ignorance about the cementing process that seals a well off from dangerous bulges of natural gas, or about devices like centralizers installed to help ensure a good seal.
"When we asked about cementing and centralizers, they said very freely, 'We don't know about that stuff; we have to trust the companies,'" Reilly said. "All they get is on-the-job training. It really is fairly startling, considering how sophisticated the industry has become. And the inspectors themselves are quite aware of their needs."
...
As for the MMS inspectors who actually visited the rigs once a month, they were not required to view any drilling operations, and inspectors told the inspector general's surveyors that rig crews often chose to stop key work while the inspectors were visiting. What's more, they rarely made unannounced visits, inspectors said in the survey.
Once aboard, inspectors would simply review a checklist of federal regulations and look at mechanical systems and other equipment on the rig to make sure they were in compliance.
ProPublica picks up the story there:
Yesterday the government's oil spill panel released a letter alleging that Halliburton knew of potential flaws in its cement prior to the Deepwater Horizon blowout. That same spill commission, in a little-noticed report by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, had earlier this week criticized government inspectors for their lack of knowledge about how to safely cement an offshore well.
...
We’ve noted such problems within the Minerals Management Service — the regulatory agency responsible for inspecting offshore drilling rigs—including its shortage of inspectors, reliance on industry to self-police, and history of ethical violations, some of which occurred as recently as 2008.
*****
And how about those findings about Halliburton's failed cement mixture? Turns out, as usual, they may escape responsibility:
The terms of Halliburton's contract with BP indemnifies the Houston company from liability for spill damages, unless it is found to have been grossly negligent, Weiss and Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Scott Burk said.
Legal terms and definitions will figure in lawsuits over the spill. BP may try to prove Halliburton was guilty of gross negligence to void the indemnity contract that protects Halliburton, according to Fred Kuffler, a Philadelphia maritime lawyer who has handled oil-spill lawsuits.
...
"It is certainly a very unwelcome complication for BP," Kuffler said. "I would think it raises a lot of questions about their supervision of their contractors."
Meanwhile, a federal judge in New Orleans has ordered tests to be conducted soon as possible on the actual cement Halliburton used. The judge said he was concerned that some component may deteriorate over time while the investigations and lawsuits are pending.
*****
Brazil is finding huge stores of oil in deepwater.
A newly-tapped oil field off the coast of Brazil could contain up to 15 billion barrels of oil, officials say.
...
Brazil has discovered billions of barrels of oil in the last few years, mostly in deep, pre salt fields off its south-eastern coast.
The discoveries should make Brazil one of the world's top 10 oil producers.
And who's moving right in to reap some of those fossilized rewards?
Oil giant BP has announced a deal that will allow it to begin exploring off the coast of Brazil.
...
"Through our entry into Brazil, BP will add a major position in another attractive deepwater basin," said Andy Inglis, BP's head of exploration and production.
"It further underlines our global position as the leading deepwater international oil company."
*****
For your Halloween amusement, you can entertain yourselves with some grim and maddening reading:
In 2000, there was a deliberate oil spill in the Norwegian Sea conducted as a "Joint Industry Project involving 23 oil companies and the US government agency Minerals Management Service (MMS)."
And BP was there.
The 159-page report (::yawn::) is available as a pdf file.
Or you might enjoy trudging through a 2004 Major Accident Hazard Risk Assessment of the Deepwater Horizon conducted by Transocean. (pdf file)
*****
It's easy to think we at Gulf Watchers have combed through news, reports, studies, images, and videos sufficiently that we pretty much aren't surprised by what's out there, but following some links from one place to another to another, I stumbled across this deeply moving video tribute to the eleven who died on the Deepwater Horizon.
*****
==== ROV Feeds =====
20876/21507 - Development Driller II's ROV 1
32900/49178 - Development Driller II's ROV 2
39168/39169 - Chouest Holiday's ROV 1
40492/40493 - Chouest Holiday's ROV 2
23211/23803 - Iron Horse ROV 1 (New feed designations)
22070/22936 - Iron Horse ROV 2 (New feed designations)
24301/24309 - West Sirius' ROV 1 (New feed)
The Development Driller 3 moved off from Relief Well #1's wellhead area at about 1:00 AM a week ago Saturday. She joined the Discoverer Enterprise, who's been stationary for the past month or so, approximately six miles northwest of the Development Driller 2. The Discoverer Enterprise is a dredger, and has been accompanied for some time by anti-pollution vessels, generally the Virginia Responder and the Mississippi Responder. The move by DD3 has not been reported in any news we've seen, but it's the first she's moved off the Macondo site since arriving to drill the relief wells with her sister ship, DD2.
In the meantime, the West Sirius (photos and descriptions and here and here), a semi-submersible driller, has replaced the DD3 beside DD2. Cargo ships, skimmers, and various other ships have been seen coming and going from the area of both Development Drillers on a regular basis.
That's a lot of action for the waters around a well that was supposed to be plugged and abandoned a long time ago.
==Multiple stream feeds (hard on browser/bandwidth)==
German multiple feed site that updates once a minute—Does not crash browsers and loads really fast.
Belgian multi-feed site, Mozaiek Webcam – BP Olielek Olieramp Deepwater Horizon
BP videos All the available directly feeds from BP.
Bobo's lightweight ROV Multi-feed: is the only additional up to date multiple feed site.
See this thread for more info on using video feeds and on linking to video feeds.
Previous Gulf Watcher diaries:
Gulf Watchers Wednesday - EPA Whistleblower Crucifies BP on Safety - BP Catastrophe AUV #415 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Monday Edition - Reparations, Repair, Responsibility - BP Catastrophe AUV #414 - shanesnana
Gulf Watchers Sunday Edition - Will New Lawsuit Revive the Moratorium? - BP Catastrophe AUV #413 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #412 - gchaucer2
Gulf Watchers Wednesday Edition - 6 Months of Gulf Sorrow - BP Catastrophe AUV #411 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Monday Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #410 - shanesnana
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #409 - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers Monday Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #408 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #407 - shanesnana
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #406 - Sunday Wrap - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #405 - bleeding heart
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #404 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #403 - Darryl House
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #402 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #401 - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #400 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #399 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera/story/
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #398 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera/story/
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #397 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #396 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #395 - Condition: transition - BP's Gulf Castastrophe - David PA
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #394 - Transitions - BP's Gulf Castastrophe - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #393 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #392 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - When Can we Share a Soda? - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #391 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Talking about Change - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #390 - Drips Redux - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #389 - Night of the Living Drips - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #388 - Sittin' Up With the Dead - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #387 - Time for a Wake? - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #386 - The Coroner Won't Pronounce - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Yasuragi
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #385 - Is it Dead? - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Lorinda Pike
The last Mothership has links to reference material.
Previous motherships and ROV's from this extensive live blog effort may be found here.
Again, to keep bandwidth down, please do not post images or videos.