Author’s note: Apparently the corporate propaganda network has made the oil disappear!
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If one believes recent reports like this from ABC News, this from USA Today, this from the New York Times, this from CBS News, or this from the Washington Post, it may be tempting to think that the worst of the Gulf oil disaster is over and the oil is gone. But scientists say that is simply not the case and a recent fly-over of the Gulf shows otherwise (see video here).
The unprecedented heavy use of dispersants by BP and the U.S. government may have kept the oil out of sight and out of mind, but also may have created an even more dangerous toxic soup that is impossible to clean up.
The New York Times reported today that there are conflicting numbers regarding the amount of dispersants used, prompting Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, to write Admiral Thad Allen of the Coast Guard on Friday saying that the dispersants contributed to “a toxic stew of chemicals, oil and gas, with impacts that are not well understood.”
In a request filed on June 16, BP told the Coast Guard that in the previous several days it had used a maximum of 3,365 gallons of dispersant in a single day. But in e-mails to members of Congress giving updates on the cleanup, the company said it had used 14,305 gallons of dispersant on June 12 and 36,000 gallons on June 13.
Researchers at Tulane University have already found the chemical dispersant, Corexit, present in blue crab larvae from the coast of Florida to the coast of Texas. These tiny creatures are a major source of food for fish and other marine life in the Gulf.
According to a Louisiana Fox News affiliate report, University of New Orleans’ Martin O’Connell, Ph.D said, “If you’re a small fish and you eat 1,000 of these small crab larvae and all of them have oil or Corexit droplets in them they could get into the fish — that little fish could be eaten and so on and so on.” Pondering the future of the Gulf, O’Connell said, “I think they should be more concerned that we might be losing whole cohorts of these animals when they’re very small, and we won’t see the impact in the adults but three or four years from now.”
Florida toxicologist Dr. William Sawyer, who has been hired on behalf of sickened fishermen and cleanup workers, says “some of these chemicals are in great excess of risk-based lethal levels…[and] the current hydrocarbon levels are capable of sterilizing our fisheries and estuary production zones.” Furthermore, the EPA and Gulf state officials have admitted that while Gulf seafood is being tested for oil, it is not being tested for the presence of dispersants.
What may even be more telling about the amount of oil that leaked into the Gulf is that despite the use of up to 1.8 million gallons of dispersants, a recent flyover of the Gulf revealed that oil is still floating on the surface of the water, and other videos show that oil is still seeping from beneath the surface of the water (see videos here).
The bottom line is that it is up to readers to believe whom they choose – the corporate media, BP and the federal government, or the scores of researchers gathering information and their own eyes. After months of obfuscation, which sources do you trust?
Get links and videos here: Madison Independent Examiner – Despite what corporate media would like people to believe, there is still oil in Gulf