. . . n’er a drop to drink. At least not in the Gulf, if you don’t want to risk a mouth full of Corexit, the main dispersantchemical BP dumped by the midnight planeload into the oil infested waters in an attempt to minimize the ”bad optics” of their disaster.
As BP prepares a final “static kill shot” to finally, really, we mean it this time, once and for all, rah-rah-sis-boo- bah “plug the damned hole” permanently, the good news from the region is that there is not as much oil visible in the water than expected given the magnitude of the underground rupture and subsequent geyser. Key word is visible. Edward Overton, an environmental chemist and professor emeritus at Louisiana State University (LSU), explained the hidden danger of dispersants to the Christian Science Monitor: “Oil spills and blowouts are horrible. There is carnage everywhere during the event. Because so much of the oil, methane, and dispersants has remained deep in the ocean during the Gulf blowout, there is damage that you and I can’t see, and it won’t be obvious for several years, maybe a decade or two.”
And yet, according to the most recent EPA experiment on juvenile marine organisms, water containing a Corexit/oil mix was no more toxic to the delicate developing animals than water contaminated by oil alone. Uh . . . pardon me, but . . . so what? Slurping down a slew of raw Apalachicolaoysters that have been contaminated with Corexit and oil isn’t any worse than guzzling the same dozen drenched solely in crude. This is supposed to be the good news?
One thing is certain, BP lied about the amount of chemicals they dumped into the Gulf, just like they lied about their safety measures, disaster preparedness, and early estimates of the magnitude of this latest deadly BP disaster. Over the course of a few weeks earlier this year, BP dumped whatRep. Ed Markey called a “carpet bombing” of chemical dispersants into the Gulf, far more than the already astonishing 1.8 million gallons BP grudgingly acknowledges.
For more on this story, read what marine toxicologist Riki Ott has written for The Huffington Post.
My question is this: Can we be expecting the First Family to dine on seafood flown to the White House from the Gulf? I mean Obama SAID it was safe to eat!?!?
Truly, how “safe” was the seafood taken out of the gulf with it’s effluents from the polluted Mississippi BEFORE the BP disaster? Yes, BP fouled it all even more, but it wasn’t the most pristine place prior and BP isn’t the only oil company filling the gulf with oil and other pollutants even as they attempt once more to plug the gusher. Maybe Obama is saying it’s as “safe” as it was before. Hmmm.