Posted on 09/15/2005 8:54:34 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
Oil Spills Seen as the Only Exception
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 14 -- Early tests on the floodwater that covered most of this city do not suggest it will leave a permanent toxic residue or render residential areas uninhabitable for more than a short time, officials of both state and federal environmental agencies said yesterday.
The pollution consists primarily of fecal matter and slightly elevated concentrations of metals such as lead and chromium that were in the city's soil before Hurricane Katrina. There are also trace amounts of many petroleum-based chemicals and some pesticides.
Despite descriptions of the floodwater as a "toxic soup" and a "witch's brew" of contaminants, the preliminary tests reveal it contains little that is different from what has been seen after past floods in other cities and here.....
Fecal bacteria have a limited life span in the open water and will not cause lasting contamination. On land, the bacteria dies once the residue dries out.
"The stuff will desiccate and you can clean it up. You fertilize your lawn? It's the same thing," Fenner said...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
In the first days after August 29, we heard: estimated dead 10,000+, bodies of gang-murdered and mutilated people stacked up in the refrigerators at the Superdome and Convention Center, widespread rape of little children, starving people resorting to cannibalism, National Guard troops massacring people in the streets, etc.--- and it turns out NONE of it was true. None of it. Yet the worldwide press was full of it, and they're not getting the subsequent debunking. So they think --- well, they think we're all black savage drug-maddened criminals and/or corrupt hateful white racist beasts.
Confirmed death toll at this point is 712. This will grow, but not dramatically. That's unspeakable sorrow for the loved ones, but it's not 10,000 or 100,000 dead. It means that 99.9+% of the people from NOLA and 90,000 square miles of Gulf Coast survived a worst-case Category 5 Hurricane, and got out with their lives.
But good news is no news...
Well, the nutbars will seize upon this as evidence of a cover-up.
Wanna ping this to your peeps?
Yes what about all these other conflicting test results that said it was so badly polluted? How can different people look at the same thing and come up with something the exact opposite?
I'd like to know the results of the Bioassay analysis.
The best way to handle this cesspool of toxic chemicals and lowlife humanity is to sterilize the area with a nuclear weapon . The town can then be renamed "Nuked" Orleans and left for the next 1000 years as the failure of Socialism in a Democratic society .
Sounds no worse than the day after 'Fat Tuesday'.
The first step towards the truth is not listening to anything Mayor Nagin has to say. (Of course the media has been doing the opposite.)
Sh*t happens, you clean it up, get back to living again.
It was and is "polluted", and some pollutants were in high concentrations RELATIVE to the safe amount.
But thousands of people walked through the water, and only a few got sick. We just set our "safe" levels very low.
Note that safe was for drinking water. In other words, they were measuring the flood waters relative to a level of pollutants that would be allowed in water that millions of people drink.
And to understand how strict that is, if 5 people in a city the size of New Orleans got sick from drinking water, it would be a scandal. The levels of pollutants allowed are to make it virtually unheard of for people to get sick from the water.
I remember on Survivor that one guy just started drinking the water without boiling, and he seemed to have survived just fine.
If your toilet overflowed in your bathroom, the water on the floor would probably be as polluted as what this was. You clean up, you move on.
"If your toilet overflowed in your bathroom, the water on the floor would probably be as polluted as what this was. You clean up, you move on."
That's right, it's not the end of the world as so many articles have been trying to push over the last 2 weeks.
Don't I recall that, after 911, we heard similar "truths" about the toxicity of the ground zero area? Then, all of a sudden, there were reports of all kinds of respiratory problems and who knows what. I'm not buying this. Where exactly does this stuff go, if not into the ground and its water, the Gulf, the Lake, the River?
WTF?
First it was 25,000 body bags ordered
Then disease contamination
Now this about the water
Does ANYBODY down there know what the hell is Really going on and if not, STFU until you do and quit reporting guesses to get media coverage.
Interesting that democrats can put on embarrassing performances and be outlandishly wrong, but the MSM still builds them up. Mayor Nagin strikes me as a guy who might be ok to join you for a beer and maybe a card game, but NOT to run a major city during a crisis.
$200,000,000,000.00 pouring into LA is the bad news.
The NO mayor a week ago was screaming the city was destroyed, he now says NO is open for business and the people will be able to start coming back.
Not just the MSM. A few Freepers got all hysterical over it too. Predicted all kinds of death and plague.
Uh, the flood waters were salt water, the lake which flooded NO is a salt water estuary.
Ah, I see my mistake. I didn't mean in my one sentence that people should drink the FLOOD WATERS.
I meant that the standards for pollutants they were using to measure the flood waters were for drinking water. And the drinking water standards are so strict that if 5 people got sick in a major city drinking water from their taps, it would be a major scandal.
(off-topic): Rush says othelia has moved, I guess I have to put my post-hurricane looting party plans on hold.
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