POLLUTION: BP dispersants “causing sickness”

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Buck

BP used at least “1.9 million gallons of widely banned toxic dispersants” to treat the 4.9 million barrels of oil that leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon drilling-rig disaster, and the consequences of treating the oil with dispersants has the potential to make both people and wildlife sick. Via Dahr Jamail at Aljazeera.net:

Naman, who works at the Analytical Chemical Testing Lab in Mobile, Alabama, has been carrying out studies to search for the chemical markers of the dispersants BP used to both sink and break up its oil.

According to Naman, 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,” Naman added.

“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.”

. . .

Gruesome symptoms

“I started to vomit brown, and my pee was brown also,” Matsler, a Vietnam veteran who lives in Dauphin Island, said. “I kept that up all day. Then I had a night of sweating and non-stop diarrhea unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”

He was also suffering from skin rashes, nausea, and a sore throat.

At roughly the same time Matsler was exposed, local television station WKRG News 5 took a water sample from his area to test for dispersants. The sample literally exploded when it was mixed with an organic solvent separating the oil from the water.

Naman, the chemist who analyzed the sample, said: “We think that it most likely happened due to the presence of either methanol or methane gas or the presence of the dispersant Corexit.”

“I’m still feeling terrible,” Matsler told Al Jazeera recently. “I’m about to go to the doctor again right now. I’m short of breathe, the diarrhea has been real bad, I still have discoloration in my urine, and the day before yesterday, I was coughing up white foam with brown spots in it.”

As for Matsler’s physical reaction to his exposure, Hugh Kaufman, an EPA whistleblower and analyst, has reported this of the effects of the toxic dispersants:

“We have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do…”

By the middle of last summer, the Alabama Department of Public Health said that 56 people in Mobile and Baldwin counties had sought treatment for what they believed were oil disaster-related illnesses.

“The dispersants used in BP’s draconian experiment contain solvents such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol,” Dr. Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist, and Exxon Valdez survivor, told Al Jazeera.

“Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber,” she continued, “Spill responders have told me that the hard rubber impellors in their engines and the soft rubber bushings on their outboard motor pumps are falling apart and need frequent replacement.”

“Given this evidence, it should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known,” Dr. Ott added.

“In ‘Generations at Risk’, medical 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.

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.

Corexit 9527 is some nasty stuff. Via Wikipedia:

Corexit 9527, considered by the EPA to be an acute health hazard, is stated by its manufacturer to be potentially harmful to red blood cells, the kidneys and the liver, and may irritate eyes and skin.^[14]^[24] The chemical 2-butoxyethanol, found in Corexit 9527, was identified as having caused lasting health problems in workers involved in the cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.^[25] According to the Alaska Community Action on Toxics, the use of Corexit during the Exxon Valdez oil spill caused people “respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders”.^[16] Like 9527, 9500 can cause hemolysis (rupture of blood cells) and may also cause internal bleeding.^[4]

According to the EPA, Corexit is more toxic than dispersants made by several competitors and less effective in handling southern Louisiana crude.^[26] On May 20, 2010, the EPA ordered BP to look for less toxic alternatives to Corexit, and later ordered BP to stop spraying dispersants, but BP responded that it thought that Corexit was the best alternative and continued to spray it.^[3]

Reportedly Corexit may be toxic to marine life and helps keep spilled oil submerged. There is concern that the quantities used in the Gulf will create ‘unprecedented underwater damage to organisms.’^[27] Nalco spokesman Charlie Pajor said that oil mixed with Corexit is “more toxic to marine life, but less toxic to life along the shore and animals at the surface” because the dispersant allows the oil to stay submerged below the surface of the water.^[28] Corexit 9500 causes oil to form into small droplets in the water; fish may be harmed when they eat these droplets.^[4] According to its Material safety data sheet, Corexit may also bioaccumulate, remaining in the flesh and building up over time.^[29] Thus predators who eat smaller fish with the toxin in their systems may end up with much higher levels in their flesh.^[4]

A “presidential commission tasked with investigating the causes of the Deepwater Horizon accident” has determined that there wasn’t enough scientific evidence to guide governmental agencies in making their decisions to use dispersants. Via Science Now:

According to the working paper, a lack of studies on dispersant toxicity meant that the Coast Guard’s Thad Allen, EPA’s Lisa Jackson, and NOAA’s Jane Lubchenco were “seriously handicapped” when deciding whether the chemicals should be used. “Because federal agencies had failed to plan adequately, they did not possess the scientific information that officials most certainly would have wanted to guide their choices.” But the paper concludes that their decision to use dispersants was reasonable under the circumstances, noting that the trio quickly consulted with a group of 50 experts. So far, the use of dispersants appears to have had greater benefit than cost.

The appeal of dispersants is that they break up oil into small droplets, which are less harmful to birds and other wildlife. The droplets are also thought to break down faster. And releasing dispersants at the gushing wellhead was intended to help protect workers on the surface by reducing the amount of oil and associated volatile organic compounds. The problem was the lack of adequate toxicity data on the dispersants themselves. Officials didn’t know the possible impacts on marine life, given the hundreds of thousands of gallons being used over several months (more than 2.5 million in all). They also didn’t know the relative toxicity of the various dispersants.

The commission staff members also concluded that the lack of planning led to delays in response; according to interviews with Coast Guard responders, EPA field staff hadn’t been delegated the authority to grant permission for dispersants to be used and were inexperienced with dispersants, thus delaying the response. The Coast Guard sources also felt that “EPA scientists with such experience were not being adequately consulted in EPA’s decision-making process.”

VIDEO: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: 22-mile oil plume lurking beneath the Gulf of Mexico’s surface

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Buck

BP OIL SPILL is 100 days old today

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Buck

Despite the unprecedented environmental disaster that the BP Oil Spill is, the U.S. Congress is no closer to passing clean energy legislation that transitions the United States from depending on oil, which is a nonrenewable and dirty energy resource, mostly derived from hostile foreign sources, to cleaner domestic forms of energy sources that aren’t carbon intensive.

Furthermore, if we’re to continue to evolve as a modern democratic society, then we’ll need to find cleaner forms of energy that are renewable. Additionally, we must balance environmental interests with development goals, since our future well-being is intimately bound up with the availability of natural resources and an access to clean environments.

On the Net:

Deepwater Horizon/BP Oil Spill: 100 Days — A Snapshot of NOAA’s Response

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BP OIL SPILL from the air

Posted on June 20, 2010 by Buck

These images are from “James Duncan Davidson, TED’s conference photographer, [and he] is among a crew of five photographers and videographers reporting on the Gulf of Mexico for the TEDxOilSpill Expedition.” You can find more photos from the TEDxOilSpill Expedition on the Flickr page of duncandavidson, and you can follow TEDxOilSpill on Twitter or read their blog. TEDxOilSpill is also conducting a poster competition.

Surface oil:

Via

Oil burning on the ocean’s surface:

Via

Oil in the marshes and islands of Barataria Bay, Louisiana:

Via

Shrimp boats skim the ocean’s surface around Barataria Bay, Louisiana:

Via

The Deepwater Horizon accident site showing controlled burns being conducted and ”one of two drilling rigs drilling the releif [sic] wells“:

Via

The authors or licensors of these images do not endorse my work or me and their images are protected under an attribution license.

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BIG OIL: The folly of advertisements from the fossil-fuel industry

Posted on June 20, 2010 by Buck

Here’s a collection of disturbing but oddly comical oil company advertisements from the past—some are eerily prophetic while others are blatantly misleading:

Print:

Given the BP Oil Spill, where are all the Bay Skimmers? This 1980 Gulf Oil advertisement boasts, “I think the best $200,000 Gulf ever spent was for this seagoing vacuum cleaner.” The advertisement further professes, “That’s a lot of oil, and if any of it gets into the water, the Bay Skimmer can pick it up fast. It was tailor-made for this job. We can go right thought an oil slick, and a big belt in the bow simply lifts the oil off the water.” Currently, boats that skim oil are being used in the Gulf of Mexico to clean up the spill. See “Skimming surface, deep dedication,” “$89,000 oil skimmer headed to Louisiana via eBay,” and “More oil spill skimmer, spotter boats activated, mostly in Alabama waters.”
Via
Fossil-fuel companies are Earth’s antifreeze: In a 1940s advertisement for Eveready Prestone antifreeze, manufactured for the National Carbon Company, Inc., there’s a prophetic victory declared over the cold and polar bears:

Via
Humble Oil predicts the future in 1962 advertisement: “Each day Humble supplies enough energy to melt 7 million tons of glacier”

Via The Huffington Post
Fish love oil: For some reason, I doubt the fish of the Gulf of Mexico need “more oil . . . more oil!” Humanity sure doesn’t need more oil. If the United States government is truly serious about energy independence (and there’s a corollary of environmental preservation that follows energy independence), then we need a commonsensical or prudent energy policy that doesn’t include fossil fuels.

Via
Climate Cage Change: Seriously, this 1945 Shell Oil Company advertisement does read “Climate in a Cage.”
Via here and here

Video:

Nude model in 1960′s commercial for oil industry: I believe this lady does an exceptional job of capturing our blissful ignorance towards energy, the environment, and entropy.

BREAK

Oysters love oil: The oil industry created this video clip to refute claims made by Gulf fishermen that oil industry activities were destroying oyster beds. The video suggests that oysters love and even can be healed, if sick, by oil industry activities. The video also claims that the oyster’s natural conditions were recreated in the laboratory but note that the tanks do not use any aquarium circulation pump. Given the recent revelation that oil companies included the walrus as part of their Gulf of Mexico recovery plan, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that these oil industry scientists, in the video below, believe these oysters can live in these small tanks without flowing water. Otherwise, the white coats and the oysters in the fish tanks are merely smoke and mirrors. Historically, oysters have been decimated in areas where anthropogenic activities have caused poor water quality, since oysters are filter feeders. Oysters are Nature’s water filtration system, because they filter and clean water. In fact, “an adult oyster can filter as much as 50 gallons of water a day.” To put it another way, “the oysters in the [Chesapeake] Bay could once filter a volume of water equal to that of the entire Bay (about 19 trillion gallons) in a week. Today, it would take the remaining Bay oysters more than a year.” Furthermore, since oysters are Nature’s water filtration system, they easily pick up nasty pollutants and diseases from the water column. This video is another example of the outrageous tactics that the oil industry are willing to use in order to misinform or create doubt.
Via NBC New York

More on oysters and disease from the Maryland Department of the Environment:

Shellfish are filter-feeding organisms; they strain the surrounding water through their gills which trap and transfer food particles to their digestive tract. If the water they are housed in is contaminated with disease-causing organisms, these organisms are also trapped and consumed as food. Because shellfish pump large quantities of water through their gills each day, even low concentrations of harmful organisms from the waters can reach dangerous levels in the shellfish. If shellfish containing these organisms are eaten raw or partially cooked, illness may result.

Shellfish are bivalve mollusks such as clams, oysters, and mussels. [The term shellfish does not include crabs, lobsters, or shrimp.] Therefore, to protect public health, it is mandatory that shellfish be harvested from approved shellfish waters where protective standards have been met.

More on oysters and poor water quality from the Chesapeake Bay Program:

How do diseases and poor water quality affect oysters?

In addition to harvest pressure, the Bay’s oysters face a number of other challenges. One of these is disease. Since the 1950s, the oyster diseases MSX and Dermo have decimated the Bay’s remaining oyster population.

The Bay’s oysters have also been impacted by poor water quality.

Changes in land use over the past century—more agricultural and urban and suburban areas and fewer forested areas—have increased the amount of nutrients and sediment that enter the Bay.

Excess nutrients fuel the growth of algae blooms that deplete oxygen in deeper waters and can hinder the development of oyster larvae.

Oysters that are under stress from poor water quality or burial by sediment are likely more prone to disease.

Spoofs & irony:

This parody illustrates the truth behind BP’s television commercials:

Greenwashing:

BP or British Petroleum campaigns on the idea that BP is synonymous to “Beyond Petroleum.” However, the use of beyond petroleum to describe BP’s energy strategy and policy is contradictory or even misleading. More from Slate.com:

So what’s with this “Beyond Petroleum” stuff? BP has a huge investment in an intensively competitive commodity business. By and large, you’ll get virtually the same performance, price, and customer experience at Sunoco as you will at BP. Cars don’t develop tastes for brands of gas the way humans develop tastes for brands of soda or potato chips. Neither, by my own unscientific polling, do people. Oil retailers differentiate themselves by offering premium coffee in the stores or providing ease of payment through gizmos like Mobil’s Speedpass or, in BP’s case, by projecting a favorable brand image.

Highlighting environmentally friendly products has emerged as a popular way for retailers and consumer-product companies to strengthen bonds with discerning customers. Think Home Depot’s rainforest-free lumber, McDonald’s biodegradable Big Mac wrappers, and the entire Body Shop. Ford briefly aspired to eco-friendliness with its drive for greater fuel efficiency but canned it when the financial going got tough.

By running these ads and by doing things like powering gas pumps with electricity generated by photovoltaic cells, BP sends a message to conflicted SUV drivers—I’m one of them—who sleep better after filling the 14-mile-per-gallon Jeep from an energy-efficient pump. What’s more, it obtains what no global oil conglomerate can buy: positive coverage in the media. (The New York Times in particular seems to have a soft spot for anything that smacks of renewable energy.)

BP’s campaign inspires no small amount of cognitive dissonance. The company proudly notes that it will invest $15 billion in oil properties in the next 10 years. But while a release notes that “BP holds a leading share in the global market for photovoltaic modules, which turn sunlight into electricity,” you’ll search far and wide on its Web site without finding any dollar figures attached to it. You can be sure that “leading share” is a lot closer to $15 million than $15 billion.

More significantly, the Beyond Petroleum campaign seems to argue for the disappearance of the company’s core product. If our kids should be so fortunate as to live in a world beyond petroleum, one in which cars, factories, and electricity plants are powered by an alternative power source—hydrogen, fuel cells, electric batteries, ethanol, fission, or fairy dust—it’s a virtual certainty BP won’t be the one to get us there.

Big players in industries—especially dominant ones—can survive and even profit from dramatic inflection points. IBM adapted from the mainframe to the PC, and Microsoft has survived the transition to the Internet. But giant companies in competitive, capital-intensive businesses, which are owned by shareholders with short time horizons, have difficulty mustering the will to develop a new product that will render existing ventures obsolete.

In The Innovator’s Dilemma, Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen argued that established players are constitutionally disinclined to develop disruptive technologies on their own. Why? Incumbents spend too much time and resources satisfying their customers’ current needs—in BP’s case, the need for cheap oil and gas. As a result, they fail to latch on to new technologies that may turn into products that customers might need or don’t even know they need.

Oil companies have been greenwashing with the idea of “Beyond Petroleum”—which is mere self-serving propaganda—for years. For example, this 1977 Exxon advertisement highlights the importance of solar energy and energy conservation. However, although solar energy and energy conservation have increased since the 1970s, renewable energy and energy conservation would certainly represent a higher share if both the United States government and energy companies had implemented energy policies that required and incentivized more renewable energy and conservation projects. The advertisement states that the United States’ top priority should be the development of more domestic oil and gas—despite oil and gas being fungible. Also, allowing our growing society to become so dependent on fossil fuels, which are a nonrenewable resource, raises national security concerns. Secondly, the advertisement highlights the importance of coal—despite the negative externalities associated with coal. Lastily, the advertisement states that “solar power can make a contribution.”
Via
These advertisements from the 1970s suggest that you can fight air pollution by burning certain petroleum products. Despite technological advances in the development of cleaner fuels and “despite America’s growing ‘green’ movement, the air in many cities [is becoming] dirtier.” Air pollution from tailpipe emissions impacts human health and the human environment by contributing to ozone pollution, global warming, pollution that damages infrastructure, and ocean acidification.
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