Health effects of oil spill still growing

(This is part 2 of a column discussing the 1-year anniversary of the Gulf Coast oil spill, including some of the environmental devestation that’s slowly being revealed by science. Read part 1 here. While we in the enviro community grapple with renewable energy, President Obama’s call for more nuclear power and more deepwater drilling, a gutted EPA and delisting of wolves from the endangered species list, some facts remain clear: The legacy of the Gulf is happening now. People’s health are degraded. The economic impact of the Gulf Oil Spill is a drop in the proverbial bucket compared to the long-lasting, unseen, unreported health affects on the people, wildlife and fisheries. Along with the gallons raw oil that gushed from the well, the resulting clean-up efforts also brought along other toxins from various dispersants, including Corexit, a mixture that resulted in Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon compounds and petroleum/dispersant remnants, as well as degraded byproducts of the mixture. The EPA considers Corexit 9527 “an acute health hazard.” It’s a brew of chemicals kept secret by Nalco, which harms red blood cells, kidneys, and the liver. The 2-butoxyethanol in Corexit 9527 causes lasting health problems in workers involved in cleaning up Alaska’s Exxon Valdez oil spill. Many of the chemicals present in oil and dispersants cause headaches; nausea; vomiting; kidney damage; altered renal functions; irritation of the digestive tract; lung damage; burning pain in the nose and throat; coughing; pulmonary edema; cancer; lack of muscle coordination; dizziness; confusion; irritation of the skin, eyes, nose, and throat; difficulty breathing; delayed reaction time; memory difficulties; stomach discomfort; liver and kidney damage; unconsciousness; tiredness/lethargy; irritation of the upper respiratory tract; and hematological disorders. That’s the real story one year later – communities of poverty, underrepresented, under-educated, and neighborhoods of color are facing “the biggest cover-up of the century.” The oil hasn’t disappeared. The problems with the oil drilling and refining industries have not gone away. People far from the Macando oil well burst are seeing the results of this “unimpeded industry chemical terrorism”: a family from Homosassa, on Florida’s east coast, 60 miles north of Tampa, took a sample from their pool’s filter on Aug. 17, 2010, almost three months after BP stopped spraying Corexit 9527-A and one month after it stopped spraying Corexit 9500. That pool sample, analyzed by Alabama chemist Bob Naman, contained 50.3 ppm of the Corexit 9527A ingredient and 2-butoxyethanol. Prevailing winds are easterly, probably pushing the airborne dispersant over the Schebler family’s house and into their pool. Mrs. Schebler told reporters that her husband “twice swam in the pool after mowing the lawn and both times, experienced severe diarrhea and very dark urine. This lasted about two days.” “2-butoxyethanol shouldn’t be anywhere,” Naman, the Alabama chemist and owner of ACT Laboratory, told the Tri-Parish Times. “It’s a toxic substance that should not be in water, it shouldn’t be in soil and it shouldn’t be in pools. That particular person (Schebler), that guy was terribly, terribly ill - bleeding from everywhere, peeing brown, he’s got kidney trouble and liver trouble. I don’t know if he’s going to stay alive much longer, but he did find out what the problem was and it was because he was swimming in his pool.” Diane Wilson said it best about how to tackle this era of misinformation and corporate agnotology: “People have a shield that protects them from bad news. It just kind of slides off, so you have to be very creative to break through. One of our actions was inspired by women in Nigeria, who protested pollution from oil companies by taking off their clothes. I was amazed how much they accomplished nonviolently by pushing the comfort zone. So we went to BP’s control center in Houston, nude, and demanded “the naked truth” about oil. A lot of people said, ‘Oh no, you can’t do something like that in Houston. It’s the Bible Belt; the media will not come.’ But they did, and the protest got a lot of press. We also had people come dressed as fishermen, as mermaids, as BP workers. A fisherman in Sargent, Texas, brought 100 pounds of dead fish and a pile of shrimp nets. We poured fake oil over everybody.” For decades, Wilson—a fourth-generation shrimper from Seadrift, Texas, a town roughly in the center of Texas’ Gulf coast—has been fighting to clean up the messes of the oil and petrochemical industries. Terry Tempest Williams is a writer, environmentalist. Her books include Finding Beauty in a Broken World and The Open Space of Democracy. Her latest piece in Orion magazine, an extended reflection on the BP oil spill, is “The Gulf Between Us.” The EXXON Valdez oil spill was the “environmental 9/11,” according to marine biologist and toxicologist, Riki Ott. EXXON has effectively owned the story since then and says it’s over, says Ott. But she has evidence that indicates everyone’s public health is being adversely affected by very low levels of chemicals in our environment, well below what is currently thought to be safe. A major culprit, she says, is oil. She has written several books on the oil topic, including “Not One Drop: Betrayal and Courage in the Wake of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.”