ALJAZEERA

“I have critically high levels of chemicals in my body,” 33-year-old Steven Aguinaga of Hazlehurst, Mississippi told Al Jazeera. “Yesterday I went to see another doctor to get my blood test results and the nurse said she didn’t know how I even got there.”

Aguinaga and his close friend Merrick Vallian went swimming at Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in July 2010.

“I swam underwater, then found I had orange slick stuff all over me,” Aguinaga said. “At that time I had no knowledge of what dispersants were, but within a few hours, we were drained of energy and not feeling good. I’ve been extremely sick ever since.”

BP’s oil disaster last summer gushed at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, causing the largest accidental marine oil spill in history – and the largest environmental disaster in US history. Compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons toxic dispersants, including one chemical that has been banned in the UK.

According to chemist Bob Naman, these chemicals create an even more toxic substance when mixed with crude oil. 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.

Poly-aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from this toxic mix are making people sick, Naman said. PAHs contain compounds that have been identified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic.

“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 told Al Jazeera.

Why isn’t the U.S. press following up on this?




  1. Li says:

    #33 Well, you just had bad PR. BP, for instance, has Reuters as it’s PR firm.

    http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/four-dead-dolphins-visibly-oiled-reuters-story-straight-reports-showed-signs-oil-contamination

    I wonder how much that cost.

  2. Li says:

    Crap, shoulda shortened it. http://goo.gl/uOKUV

  3. Smith says:

    #30 — And I’ll tell you another thing I learned from experience: Industry can never use scientific evidence to sway public opinion in their favor.

    A rancher grazed his cattle on company property. (He sold the property to us 40 years ago, but he kept the grazing rights.) Then one year, two of his cattle died under mysterious circumstances and he claimed that we were responsible. Not wanting to get into a legal battle, we agreed to pay him $20,000 in damages.

    Two years later, eight of his cows died under circumstances that looked like grass tetany poisoning. This time we let him take us to court. The rancher hired a vet professor from that same local university, who then conducted autopsies on the cattle. Then only thing unusual that this ‘expert’ discovered was that the copper level was a bit low in the cattle’s blood. From this he argued that our plant had contaminated the ground with molybdenum, which had been observed to cause copper deficiency in cattle. (Off course, a simple mineral block would have solved this problem, if the rancher had bothered to set them out.)

    Copper deficiency is a chronic condition, meaning the harmful effects are observed over months. All of these cows died within 12 hours of each other.

    We argued that the cause was grass tetany, which is an acute reaction cattle can get from eating spring grass low in magnesium. The cattle showed classic symptoms of grass tetany prior to death. Of course, the ‘expert’ never bothered to check for grass tetany because — he had never seen a case of it before.

    Who won in court: The rancher showed a video to the jury of his cattle staggering around and thrashing on the ground (again, grass tetany symptoms) and the jury awarded him $6 million.

  4. Forces of Repression says:

    #27 Mr. Fusion

    Somehow, you don’t sound like yourself these days. Happy upcoming Birthday, by the way.

    It’s not my job to do research – for you or anyone else. You want me to supply a list of 27 links about mass marine death in the Gulf and hundreds of documented complaints of ill health?

    Where would I get those links, since the media seems to have utterly forgotten about this apparently insignificant event? Talk about Alzheimer’s…

    If you read what this sudden influx of new DU bloggers have posted on this topic, you already know they have a research department, whose sole responsibility is to obfuscate and outright lie to save some corporations some money. It’s what they do.

    I don’t believe it’s even open to question. Just read the Comments here.

    We could re-title this post “Suddenly, Experts Appear”. Oddly enough, they’re all giving us corporate spin, talking back and forth with each other. Why, I wonder?

    Surely real scientists have actual work to do, other than shilling for BP for free on a crummy blog!

  5. Uncle Patso says:

    Predictions:

    1) This will get worse
    2) Nothing will be done

  6. Smith says:

    #36 said, “If you read what this sudden influx of new DU bloggers have posted on this topic, you already know they have a research department, whose sole responsibility is to obfuscate and outright lie to save some corporations some money. It’s what they do.”

    For your information, I have been posting to this blog for years. I rarely post anymore, because you can’t teach “know-it-alls” anything.

    And your post also proved my point: nothing anyone says that runs counter to your “industry is evil” religion could possibly penetrate your thick skull.

    No need for industry in this country — we can all just go on welfare.

  7. Forces of Repression says:

    #38 Smith

    On the Internet, no-one knows you’re a shill until they read what you wrote.

    I’m not going to bother pointing out it’s pretty obvious to people with a brain that pumping 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf is probably a bad thing, just on the face of it.

    I also won’t mention the 1.9 million gallons of toxic dispersant, added to the mix, most likely didn’t help anything except BP’s bottom line.

    I won’t even mention the eleven Americans that BP murdered. No-one else is.

    If you’re certain no harm was done to the Gulf itself, the creatures who live in the Gulf and the people who live along the Gulf, who am I to question you, a fucking self-proclaimed expert?

    You obviously have a very low opinion of the intelligence of people reading this blog – or you’re just another shill for BP. People can decide for themselves.

    The Internet is lousy with you guys lately, like maggots on an old corpse.

  8. bobbo, picking nits for what purpose says:

    Interesting how each side wants to use a single instance of whatever to characterize the entire situation. And reality isn’t so simple.

    Hoomans really are one dimensional.

  9. ggore says:

    #29, good analogy. And by the same token some people can drive a car and some people cannot go ten feet in one without killing themselves or someone else. Therefore by your logic all cars should be banned if even ONE person is harmed by one. Please! I’m sure every person who comes down with cancer down there for the next thousand years is going to blame it on the government and BP, because why else would they come down with cancer? Genetics? Pre-disposed conditions such as smoking that they already had? Other factors in their life? Cancer-causing viruses? No no no, the ONLY reason they can possibly come down with cancer according to your logic is this oil spill, and the government and BP are completely at fault. To this I say: poppycock!

    And for you other people who just automatically believe everything these scaremonger “environmentalists” say, and disbelieve everything the government and companies say just because they are doing the speaking, your logic is a little out of whack. Yes, some people were probably made sick by these chemicals, I don’t deny that. But to just automatically assume that BP and the government are lying, were at fault to begin with, in a conspiracy with each other before the disaster even occurred, etc, is just ludicrous.


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