Following up on Deepwater Horizon disaster

[Gregory Foster]

Passing along in relation to Public Labs' and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade's work mapping the spill.

Al Jazeera (Apr 18) - "Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists" by @DahrJamail
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/04/201241682318260912.html

We all knew it would be bad, but that's a rough read.
gf

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@gregoryfoster <> http://entersection.com/

[Adam Griffith]

The FDA article disagrees.  Interesting that a group with an interest in the economy would rule that the fish are safe to eat...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/gulf-seafood-safe-oil-spill-concerns-fda-article-1.1064752

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[Scott Eustis]

It really takes minute amounts of mutagenic or tetragenic oil-chemicals to make weirdo shrimp and killifish.  Transfer through consumption requires higher levels, although the levels in the creatures are cause for concern.

And no one seems to be talking about metals. 

I like this messaging strategy, although LDWF is using FDA standards that I / NRDC thinks are too lax.  LDWF has to both ensure safety and sell shrimp, so their institutional bias is interesting.

LDWF outlines "how safe is safe"

http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/news/33720 

Louisiana Seafood Still Safe to Eat; Average Consumer Could Eat 63 lbs of Louisiana Shrimp, Each Day for 5 Years

An "Average" person is 140 pounds, i think.  

An average person is not pregnant, nor a child themselves.  

An average Gulf Coast resident can eat a lot of shrimp, yessir.  

And an average person living on the bayou cooks those shrimp whole--when a lot of the testing is done on the tails only.  Many of the metabolites of oil wind up in the colon and fatty tissues. 

People on the bayou live on the water, and are the same people, often, who worked the VOO program. So coastal communities have multiple routes of exposure. 

This is the basis of the NRDC critique

http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.1103507

and here is Miriam writing about it

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mrotkinellman/bp_oil_disaster_two_years_late.html

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mrotkinellman/more_gulf_seafood_testing_need.html

On the Bayou, shrimp isn't just a food, it's a currency.  so the statistically convenient person is not a reality.  The statistically convenient person is someone who lives in a state where we're exporting shrimp into.     

Dr. Patricia Williams at UNO (toxicologist) is also critical of the state testing methods.  She is very concerned about heavy metals, and that there's not any or much testing for heavy metals.  Arsenic, in her mind, is the one she would pick. Arsenic can be detected via urine sample.  It's problematic, in my mind--Arsenic is in a lot of things.

She is silenced by the looming trial.   But someone recorded her speaking and uploaded it to neworleans.indymedia.org.  

As someone who receives gross pictures of local sea creatures every week, i am now wary of shrimp boils, but i still eat shrimp in restaurants and sandwiches (when it's been prepared or fried).  I'm also more than 150 pounds and not going to bear a child.  I'm probably full of mercury already.  

I also live in the city.  I grew up down here.  I eat gulf shrimp from restaurants several times a week.  I did my master's in shrimp fisheries; so, really, if i stop eating shrimp, the terrorists have won.  going down with the ship. 

so [watch this space]! I guess. ha. 

Not Seafood, but Health related, is something that Public Labs Spectral people would be interested in--Surfrider's ongoing attempts to detect oil/Corexit with UV lamps.

Here's that report.  the pictures are kinda freaky, because apparently the UV is making dispersed oil fluoresce from within people's skin (who wants to convince me it's fake?  please?)

Mother Jones.

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/04/microbes-arent-eating-oil-gulf-beaches-thanks-corexit-dispersant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lyfdC3_oV4&feature=youtu.be

From Surfrider:

http://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/monitoring-gulf-beaches-for-oil-and-dispersants

http://emeraldcoast.surfrider.org/2012/04/surfrider-foundation-oil-study-reports-available-for-download/ 

"1. The data collected confirms that Corexit dispersant mixed with crude oil 

creates a discernible fluorescent signature when illuminated by 370nm 

wavelength (UV) light.

2. The use of Corexit as a dispersant has inhibited the microbial degradation of 

hydrocarbons in the crude oil and has allowed Polycyclic Aromatic 

Hydrocarbons (PAH) concentration levels to consistently exhibit high toxicity 

levels in excess of the carcinogenic exposure level specified by NIH and 

OSHA."

http://emeraldcoast.surfrider.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/FindingsReleaseFinal.pdf 

Scott

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[Jeffrey Warren]

Scott that is totally fascinating. I'd like to see the dispersant info added to the spectroscopy research notes; would you mind forwarding to no...@publiclaboratory.org? Or manually posting?

Its easy to lose focus on what our original goals were with spectrometry especially as some folks are having so much success using them for alternative and also useful things like coral lamp optimization.

I'd love to coordinate with surfrider if you know folks there.

Jeff