BP is doing exactly what big corporations are expected to do, Muth said: Launch a massive public relations campaign to show that everything’s back to normal on the Gulf Coast. Some things are, he said, but the extent of the damage remains an unknown. continued
NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?
While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here
In 2001, the Exxon Valdez spill was still evident by finding crude beneath the sand after digging an 18″ hole in any of the beaches in the area. Researchers found oil on the beaches of Prince William Sound in 2001, twelve years after the Exxon Valdez spill, they said that the oil they found beneath the sand looked as fresh as if the spill was last week.
Also in 2001 NOAA scientists working at the Alaskan Auke Bay Research Station found that dissolved or exposed oil had a sublethal toxic effect on organisms at levels of concentration many hundreds of times lower than scientists previously thought. “Later research by other scientists showed that oil exposure could damage a fish’s heart and sometimes produced early death.” (The Above Exxon Valdez information and quote from “The Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power”, by Steve Coll, 2012)
Now,this Exxon Valdez spill saw no Corexit dispersants, the damage to the beaches and the elevated mortality of the Pink Salmon and other local fish stocks fish stocks, some twelve years after the spill, apparently resulted from the 240,000 or so barrels of leaked crude after the Exxon Valdez ran aground. The Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 is conservatively estimated at 4.9 million barrels or 205.8 million gallons of crude along with 2 million gallons of the oxygen robbing toxic Corexit dispersant.
Corexit 9500 is a solvent originally developed by Exxon and now manufactured by the Nalco (owned by Goldman Sachs) of Naperville, Illinois. Corexit is four times more toxic than oil in itself as a separate substance oil is toxic at 11 parts per million, Corexit 9500 at only 2.61 parts per million.
This dispersant is banned in many parts of the world. Corexit is many times more toxic than crude oil and when Corexit is used to hide oil, as it was during the Deepwater Horizon spill, the synergistic compound formed by Corexit and crude oil is even more devastating to the environment than either substance by themselves.
Depending on the extent of the research done and for the time frame that is used to project out its effects on the years to come, estimates range from between 11 to 52 as a multiplier for toxicity, the consequence of using this Corexit cover-up.
Sadly, it would seem there’s a lot more effects still to come from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
References
http://fishery.about.com/b/2012/12/18/dispersant-suit-dismissed.htm?nl=1
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/344-208/11417-horrific-injuries-linked-to-bp-dispersant-corexit
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/study-corexit-made-gulf-oil-spill-52-
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/12/chemical-dispersant-made-bps-gulf-oilspill-52-times-more-toxic
Our government officials skated right out of accountability, and enabled BP to get away with the murder of the Gulf.
Janey, and Stevey, and the Admiral should be jailed.
So what can we expect to find as long term effects in the Gulf of Mexico from the Horizon spill which is some 20 times greater than the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, with the added attraction of the 2 million gallons of Corexit used in the Gulf (sprayed mostly at night)during the Horizon spill?
In 2001, the Exxon Valdez spill was still evident by finding crude beneath the sand after digging an 18″ hole in any of the beaches in the area. Researchers found oil on the beaches of Prince William Sound in 2001, twelve years after the Exxon Valdez spill, they said that the oil they found beneath the sand looked as fresh as if the spill was last week.
Also in 2001 NOAA scientists working at the Alaskan Auke Bay Research Station found that dissolved or exposed oil had a sublethal toxic effect on organisms at levels of concentration many hundreds of times lower than scientists previously thought. “Later research by other scientists showed that oil exposure could damage a fish’s heart and sometimes produced early death.” (Above Exxon Valdez information and quote from “The Private Empire: Exxon Mobil and American Power”, by Steve Coll, 2012)
Now please note that the Exxon Valdez spill saw no Corexit dispersants, the elevated mortality rate of the Pink Salmon and other local fish stocks, some twelve years after the spill, apparently resulted from the 240,000 or so barrels of leaked crude after the Exxon Valdez ran aground. The Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 is conservatively estimated at 4.9 million barrels or 205.8 million gallons of crude along with 2 million gallons of the oxygen robbing toxic Corexit dispersant.
Corexit 9500 is a solvent originally developed by Exxon and now manufactured by the Nalco (owned by Goldman Sachs) of Naperville, Illinois. Corexit is four times more toxic than oil by itself; oil is toxic at 11 parts per million, Corexit 9500 at only 2.61 parts per million.
This dispersant is banned in many parts of the world; but was used freely in the Gulf.
When Corexit is used to hide oil, as it was during the Deepwater Horizon spill (Despite Lubchenco’s claim months after the spill that ravenous warm water microbes ate 75% of the oil) the synergistic compound formed by Corexit and crude oil is even more devastating to the environment than either substance by themselves.
Depending on the extent of the research done and for the time frame that is used to project out its effects on the years to come, estimates range from between 11 to 52 as the multiplier for toxicity, the consequence of using this Corexit when mixing it with the oil as a cover-up.
Dispersants break up the oil into smaller parts then sink it to where it can be ingested by subsurface animals such as fish and the organisms they feed on.
We can expect much more discouraging news out of the Gulf and all this could, and certainly should, have been avoided.
References
http://fishery.about.com/b/2012/12/18/dispersant-suit-dismissed.htm?nl=1
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/344-208/11417-horrific-injuries-linked-to-bp-dispersant-corexit
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/study-corexit-made-gulf-oil-spill-52-
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/12/chemical-dispersant-made-bps-gulf-oilspill-52-times-more-toxic