Posted on 07/30/2010 8:19:04 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
Now that BP engineers have managed to place a cap on the company's bleeding well in the Gulf, the sprawling oil slicks seem to have retreated from the water's surface, claimed many media reports this week.
"Where is all the oil?" an AFP headline asked. Time magazine ran a piece suggesting that the environmental impact of the spill has been "exaggerated." The New York Times ran a story that said the "Gulf oil spill is vanishing fast." And this very news organization ran a story suggesting that oil-gobbling microbes are eating up a lot the oil.
These reports have angered many — particularly those close to the disaster who are still, well, seeing lots of oil.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Amen to that ... and lots of dead pelicans, dolphins, fish washed up on the beach, etc.,etc..
Would that be RED koolade or BLUE koolade?? For the record, I don't much like koolade. Crystal Light is more my speed.
Just wanted to thank you for sharing your expertise on this and other “oil spill” related threads.
Thanks for the context. Simple is good. :)
And if the only effect that’s being looked at in acute toxicity tests is death, true exposure to an oil spill isn’t a carbon monoxide gas chamber...so there are no long term effects to long term exposure ?
Well, "death" is certainly not the only effect that is looked at in acute toxicity studies. Any symptoms noted before death are certainly noted and recorded. And certainly any high-level exposures to humans will record any and all symptoms that can be measured at the time. The folks that work at chemical plants are our "canaries", as some of them will be exposed, despite the best efforts to prevent such exposure.
But the point that I'm trying to get to is that for there to be "long term effects" there usually has to be "long term exposure" above some threshold value. There are very few chemicals that have sufficiently irreversible effects that a single exposure to other than a very high high level will cause such a problem. In fact, at the moment I can't think of a single chemical that will do so from "chemical effects" alone. The ONE case that occurs to me is exposure to radioactive iodine from a nuclear reactor breach or bomb, and that is because the thyroid is so efficient at grabbing onto iodine and not letting go that the thyroid gets a fatal dose. And all the measurement data that I have seen for pretty much every toxin associated with the spill have been at such low levels that I just don't see how there could be significant problems.
“You would have seen nightly nightly reports on the ABCNBCCBS news if GW Bush was president. They would have been screaming, lying and besmirching if this eco-damage took place under George Bush”
Absolutely.
They would be interviewing doctors and showing hospitals and clinics who are now treating children and adults who have been affected with multiple health problems.
As we know, the clean-up workers were forbidden by BP to use their own doctors. They were/are to seek medical help only at clinics set up by BP.
And the reason for that requirement is that the BP docs are better qualified to identify and treat chemical exposures. Your average GP/MD is FAR less well qualified to do either.
When I worked for "ye giant chemical company", one of the routine duties of the plant physicians was to run annual physicals and document any effects that might be related to exposure. Those folks who worked a plants with more-toxic chemicals got more and deeper testing, in some cases every six months instead of annually.
I respect your opinion.
I’m just having a difficult time with you and other FReepers who are siding with BP, Obama, and the MSM who are hiding the truth regarding how dangerous this situation is regarding the possible long term effects of the oil spill and the use of Corexit...
AFAIK, Obama has expressed no sentiment about the dispersants. I quote the science as it is found, not "opinion". And "I" have a REAL difficult time with people who, on a conservative website, constantly source socialist "green" websites as authoritative, because those ARE the people who are fanning the flames of the "terrible toxic dispersant/oil/anything at all they can come up with".
The outlandish claims made by the "we're all gonna die" crowd have been collapsing like a house of straws as time passes and more data collected.
Here's my prediction. The Gulf of Mexico will recover from this spill far more quickly than from the one at Ixtoc in 1979, and the reason will prove to be the subsea use of dispersants to break the spilled oil up into small suspended droplets which are far more favorable to bacterial attack than contiguous masses of oil. No human will be found to have been injured by the dispersants.
“Even the people who make their living off the seafood-rich waters of Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish have a hard time swallowing the government’s assurances that fish harvested in the shallow, muddy waters just offshore must be safe to eat because they don’t smell too bad.”
“I wouldn’t feed it to you or my family. I’m afraid someone’s going to get sick.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jwwW8sMP0B230zNuvkZtZ6rP8EWgD9HBFS5G0
“Even the people who make their living off the seafood-rich waters of Louisiana’s St. Bernard Parish have a hard time swallowing the government’s assurances that fish harvested in the shallow, muddy waters just offshore must be safe to eat because they don’t smell too bad.”
“I wouldn’t feed it to you or my family. I’m afraid someone’s going to get sick.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jwwW8sMP0B230zNuvkZtZ6rP8EWgD9HBFS5G0
“It’s completely scientifically dishonest to pooh-pooh the potential here when you are talking about some of the most toxic chemicals that we know,” said Kramer, who is founder and president of consulting firm Epidemiology International in Hunt Valley, Maryland.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-22/health-data-gaps-bp-suspicions-worry-u-s-panelists.html
Do you honestly think that seafood is going to be sold based ONLY on a “smell test”. If you do then you’re stupider than I thought. Any “smell test” will be IN ADDITION TO analysis done by instrumentation. But it is a fact that the nose is, in many cases, much more sensitive than analysis instrumentation, so people might reject perfectly safe seafood because of an “off odor”.
Anybody who makes a comment like this is simply lying. The materials in the dispersant are nowhere NEAR being "the most toxic chemicals that we know". ALL of the components in the dispersants are COMMON HOUSEHOLD CHEMICALS, in use by thousand and tens of thousands of people every day. Simply because they happen to be mixed up and a sticker that says "Corexit 9500" is put on the tank does NOT automatically make them more toxis.
“you’re stupider than I thought”....
I don’t respond to people who don’t know what they’re talking about, so they resort to name calling...
Bye..have a nice day.
So the bp guy early on who said “it’s a big ocean” was pretty close?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.