"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened." Winston Churchill
I would say the same is true about historical facts. Corexit made people sick in Alaska.
Alexander Higgins report presents some alarming information. Maybe those at greatest risk should run....from the Gulf:
Marine Toxicologists On BP Gulf Oil Spill “We need to start talking about who’s going to pay for evacuations.”
Posted by Alexander Higgins - July 26, 2010 at 10:22 pm - Permalink
Gulf fisherman merely splashed with water containing oil dispersed with Corexit suffered from multiple symptoms including hear palpitations and rectal bleeding.
Then again, disease is a huge profit center in America.
For more about the potential danger from an EPA whistleblower and an interesting comparison of Orwell's and Huxley's dystopies towards the end. youtube video included:
We all knew from the beginning that the levels of air and water toxicity from millions of gallons of oil would be....well, toxic.
No scientist here; however, its seemed obvious to me in early June:
That BP crap is toxic and who knows how unhealthy it is mixed with the Corexit.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And historically, there are many survivors of the Valdez/Oil/Corexit disaster to speak of the horrendous health hazards:
When Louisiana residents ask marine toxicologist and community activist Riki Ott what she would do if she lived in the Gulf with children, she tells them she would leave immediately. “It’s that bad. We need to start talking about who’s going to pay for evacuations.”
In late May, she began meeting people in the Gulf with symptoms like headaches, dizziness, sore throats, burning eyes, rashes and blisters that are so deep, they’re leaving scars. People are asking, “What’s happening to me?”
She says the culprit is almost two million gallons of the neurotoxin pesticide Corexit, the dispersant BP is using to break up and hide the oil below the ocean’s surface. “It’s an industrial solvent. It’s a degreaser.
It’s chewing up boat engines off-shore.
It’s chewing up dive gear on-shore.
Of course it’s chewing up people’s skin.
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/...
And scientists know corexit/oil mix is harmful:
Although a large group of marine scientists meeting in late May reached a consensus that the application of dispersants was a legitimate element of the spill response, another group, organized by Shaw, more recently concluded "that Corexit dispersants, in combination with crude oil, pose grave health risks to marine life and human health and threaten to deplete critical niches in the Gulf food web that may never recover."
One particular concern: "The properties that facilitate the movement of dispersants through oil also make it easier for them to move through cell walls, skin barriers, and membranes that protect vital organs, underlying layers of skin, the surfaces of eyes, mouths, and other structures."
Perry told the Huffington Post that the small size of the droplets was clearly a factor in how the oil made its way under the crab larvae shells. Perry said the oil droplets in the water "are just the right size that probably in the process of swimming or respiring, they're brought into that cavity."
That would not happen if the droplets were larger, she said.
http://www.meriresearch.org/...
Common on, keep the kids away from contaminated beaches! Err on the side of caution for the sake of the children. Good grief!
Executive Summary
Chemicals in crude oil and dispersants can cause a wide range of health effects in people and wildlife, depending on the level of exposure and susceptibility. Crude oil has many highly toxic chemical ingredients that can damage every system in the body. Dispersant chemicals can affect many of the same organs. These include:
respiratory system nervous system, including the brain
liver reproductive/urogenital system
kidneys endocrine system
circulatory system gastrointestinal system
immune system sensory systems
musculoskeletal system hematopoietic system (blood forming)
skin and integumentary system disruption of normal metabolism
Damage to these systems can cause a wide range of diseases and conditions. Some may be immediately evident, and others can appear months or years later. The chemicals can impair normal growth and development through a variety of mechanisms, including endocrine disruption and direct fetal damage. They cause mutations that may lead to cancer and multi-generational birth defects. Some are known carcinogens, such as benzene (CDC, 1999)
.
http://www.sciencecorps.org/...
And now we have a senior EPA whistleblower warning us of a possible cover-up. You can read the full Democracy Now transcript at the link below the quote:
EPA Whistleblower recently warns Gulf Residents and workers:
EPA Whistleblower Accuses Agency of Covering Up Effects of Dispersant in BP Oil Spill Cleanup
With BP having poured nearly two million gallons of the dispersant known as Corexit into the Gulf of Mexico, many lawmakers and advocacy groups say the Obama administration is not being candid about the lethal effects of dispersants. We speak with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response and a leading critic of the decision to use Corexit.
http://www.democracynow.org/...
Interestingly, Hugh Kaufman
..."did the ombudsman investigation on Ground Zero, where EPA made false statements about the safety of the air, which has since, of course, been proven to be false.
Consequently, you have the heroes, the workers here, a large percentage of them are sick right now, not even ten years later, and most of them will die early because of respiratory problems, cancer, etc., because of EPA’s false statements....
And I think the media now has to follow the money, just as they did in Watergate, and tell the American people who’s getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the Gulf.
The sole purpose in the Gulf for dispersants is to keep a cover-up going for BP to try to hide the volume of oil that has been released and save them hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars of fines.
That’s the purpose of using the dispersants, not to protect the public health or environment."
More about Corexit here:
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/...
My take away is simple: Facts and history more closely indicate potential hazards for the residents of the Gulf in the path of the Corexit/oil/oil slicks. That's a huge concern for the most vulnerable listed in the last link above if not everyone; however, it appears that the Corexit has made the toxic substances invisible to the human eye and only observable in laboratories.
Children may swim and play in the invisible toxins. People may eat the invisible toxins on the half shell or in gumbo. Adults working in the toxins may not live beyond 50 years of age, like the Valdez workers.
Why? To save BP from paying higher fines?
It's so double speak these days: bad is good, up is down, black is white, imo.
Is it any wonder that we are recalling the words of Animal Farm, 1984, and Brave New World, even Alice in Wonderland?
Got to love our Brave New World, a must read depicting one form of dystopia:
A dystopia is a vision of an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, though often under the guise of being utopian.
A dystopia is, thus, regarded as a sort of negative utopia and is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government.
Dystopias usually feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant states of warfare or violence.
A dystopian society is also often characterized by mass poverty for most of its inhabitants and a large military-like police force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
A Comparison of Orwell's and Huxley's dystopia fears
- Orwell feared those who would ban books.
- Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information.
- Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us.
- Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.
- In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain.
- In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us.
- Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.
- Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism.
- Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.
- Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
- As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."
- In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure.
7. In short, Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
I FEAR THAT THE PATH TO ORWELL'S DYSTOPIA IS HUXLEY'S DYSTOPIA.
Attn: BP Techies and Fishgrease
The leaks.
Included here because leaks can affect air and water quality as well, especially if they are going to last for a very, very long time.
Lastly, this is for Fishgrease and the other techies here. In case you missed this awesome information, complete with 3D shots of the history of leaks in the area of BP's gusher, I highly recommend :
BP Gulf Oil Spill Seeps Mapped In Google Earth – Feds Explanation Of Sea Floor Leaks Don’t Add Up
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/...
Many of the images from Higgins blog come from here:
http://beta.w1.noaa.gov/...
Did BP Accidentally Tap Into the Rigel Gas Field?
July 29, 2010
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/...
A poet writing on the uprising in East Germany once wrote (Bertold Brecht, page 286, The Company, by Robert Littell):
Would it not be simpler
If the government
Dissolved the people
And elected another?
In the words of a Valdez survivor: