Friday, July 30, 2010

Dispersed Gulf Oil Now Invisible and Far More Deadly

I met Hugh Kaufman many years ago, and talked with him for about an hour about various environmental criminals. His target at that time was W.R. Grace, whose deliberate destruction of a swath of Massachusetts remains one of the all-time worst cases of water pollution.

Yes, Hugh Kaufman is a fanatic who makes people uncomfortable. But he has endured more than 30 years of abuse and harassment at EPA in order to remain the no-compromise hardass at an agency too eager to cave to polluters. He's speaking the truth still today - on BP.

KAUFMAN: If they did not use dispersants, they would have been able to get most of that oil off of the surface and would not have endangered all of the fish and ecosystem underneath the water that now will be affected for decades on down the line.

I was listening to some of the, quote, “experts” who are being paid by BP at universities who are saying that the oil has disappeared. It hasn‘t disappeared. It‘s throughout thousands of square miles in the Gulf, mixed with dispersants, and because the temperatures down there are so cold, they‘re going to be around for decades.

Heather at Crooks and Liars has the video.

Lawrence O'Donnell talks to EPA whistleblower Hugh Kaufman about the claims that the oil is now "disappearing" from the Gulf of Mexico. There's no way in hell that much oil just goes away. Digby's got more on this here The Good News Is The Poison:

BP seems to have ably headed off the worst of the PR disaster by keeping the worst of the oil more or less off the shoreline. The actual disaster may have been made worse by the use of toxic chemicals. So it's all good.

That's what they want us to believe anyway. We need more Hugh Kaufman's out there to counter this nonsense.

See the video and read the transcript here.

2 comments:

Tim said...

I heard these jerkoffs claiming there's no oil showing. Here's the thing, the dispersants Corexit have been used for over 30 years. There sole purpose is to hide the oil from plain sight. Out of sight out of mind. This is so mindless morons that make their way to a Camera can expose on all the things they don't know. Some Oil has burnt off from sunshine.
The majority is deep underwater. We all seen pictures of the well and as it leaked the dispersant was injected a mile down into it. Millions of gallons of the dispersant was administered to the sea.
As a matter of fact the corexit has been found in fish already. Who knows how long it will affect the whole Gulf. BP, bless their hearts in an effort to save grace and money has hired as many scientist as they could buy to spread their message. No OIL here. I'm getting lengthy here but just one more thing. Week two I had a copy of the MSDS sheets of the Corexit. Our Government said they couldn't find out the ingredients or the Health Hazards. I guess they should have called me.

Yellow Dog said...

Tim: Yes, they should have!

For everyone else: MSDS stands for Material Safety Data Sheet. Federal law requires every potentially toxic substance used in this country to have an MSDS that details its dangers to human beings. They are used especially by emergency medical and response personnel to both protect themselves and save their patients.

MSDS are public information and must be produced on request.