18th September, 2011

Many people living near the site of the BP oil spill have reported a long list of similar health problems.

Oil, tar balls, tar mats, and dead animals are still common sights along the Gulf of Mexico [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

Just weeks after BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, 2010, Fritzi Presley knew something was very wrong with her health.

The 57-year-old singer/songwriter from Long Beach, Mississippi began to feel sick, and went to her doctor.

“I began getting treatments for bronchitis, was put on several antibiotics and rescue inhalers, and even a breathing machine,” she told Al Jazeera. The smell of chemicals on the Mississippi coastline is present on many days when wind blows in from the Gulf.

Presley’s list of symptoms mirrors what many people living in the areas affected by BP’s oil spill have told Al Jazeera.

“I was having them then, and still have killer headaches. I’m experiencing memory loss, and when I had my blood tested for chemicals, they found m,p-Xylene, hexane, and ethylbenzene in my body.”

The 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf last year was the largest accidental marine oil spill in history, affecting people living near the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

Compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic dispersants, which are banned by many countries, including the UK. According to many scientists, these dispersants create an even more toxic substance when mixed with crude oil.

Dr Wilma Subra, a chemist in New Iberia, Louisiana, has tested the blood of BP cleanup workers and residents.

“Ethylbenzene, m,p-Xylene and hexane are volatile organic chemicals that are present in the BP crude oil,” Subra explained to Al Jazeera. “The acute impacts of these chemicals include nose and throat irritation, coughing, wheezing, lung irritation, dizziness, light-headedness, nausea and vomiting.”

Subra explained that exposure has been long enough to create long-term effects, such as “liver damage, kidney damage, and damage to the nervous system. So the presence of these chemicals in the blood indicates exposure”.

Testing by Subra has also revealed BP’s chemicals are present “in coastal soil sediment, wetlands, and in crab, oyster and mussel tissues”.

Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, and skin and eye contact. Symptoms of exposure include headaches, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system depression, neurotoxic effects, genetic mutations, cardiac arrhythmia, and cardiovascular damage. The chemicals can also cause birth defects, mutations, and cancer.

Joseph Yerkes, from Okaloosa Island, Florida, was in BP’s oil clean-up programme for more than two months, during which time he was exposed to oil and dispersants on a regular basis.

“My health worsened progressively,” Yerkes said. “Mid-September [2010] I caught a cold that worsened until I went to a doctor, who gave me two rounds of antibiotics for the pneumonia-like symptoms, and he did blood tests and found high levels of toxic substances in my blood that he told me came from the oil and dispersants.”

Since then, his life has been overrun with health problems and trying to get compensation from BP for his health costs and lost livelihood.

“They’ve [BP] not paid me a dime, and I’m scared,” Yerkes, whose lawyers were told by the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which was set up by BP to administer compensation payments, that his health claim was “compensable”. Yerkes added, “I’m moving out of my house into a one-bedroom apartment, and have sold just about everything I have. BP is starving us out.”

Yerkes has begun cutting out parts of the detoxification programme his doctor had prescribed for him because he can’t afford it. He then began getting sick again.

“If they [BP] don’t do what they agreed to do, I’m in trouble. “

- Joseph Yerkes 

“I don’t know what I’ll do now,” Yerkes added, “Because I’ve spent $50,000 on medical, treatments, supplements, and having to move from the Gulf. If they [BP] don’t do what they agreed to do, I’m in trouble.”

His memory loss has become so bad that Yerkes has tried to adjust his life around it by leaving himself notes. Some days, his body aches so much, and his nausea is so severe, he is unable to get out of bed.

“I consider myself a tough person, but this has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through,” he said.

‘Dying from the inside out’ 

Presley lives three blocks from the coast with her daughter, 30-year-old Daisy Seal, who has also become extremely sick.

Both of them had their blood tested for the chemicals present in BP’s oil, and six out of the 10 chemicals tested for were present.

Daisy Seal has had skin rashes, respiratory problems, and two miscarriages, which she attributes to chemicals from BP’s oil and toxic dispersants [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

“I started having respiratory problems, a horrible skin rash, headaches, nosebleeds, low energy, and trouble sleeping,” Seal told Al Jazeera. “And I now feel like I’m dying from the inside out.”

Seal, who already has an eight-year-old son, has had two miscarriages in the last year.

“In ‘Generations at Risk’, medical doctor Ted Schettler and others warn that solvents can rapidly enter the human body,” Dr Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist, and Exxon Valdez survivor, told Al Jazeera. “They evaporate in air and are easily inhaled, they penetrate skin easily, and they cross the placenta into fetuses. For example, 2-butoxyethanol [a chemical used in Corexit, an oil dispersant] is a human health hazard substance; it is a fetal toxin and it breaks down blood cells, causing blood and kidney disorders.”

“Solvents dissolve oil, grease, and rubber,” Ott continued. “Spill responders have told me that the hard rubber impellors in their engines and the soft rubber bushings on their outboard motor pumps are falling apart and need frequent replacement. Given this evidence, it should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known.”

Dr Rodney Soto, a medical doctor in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, has been testing and treating patients with high levels of oil-related chemicals in their blood streams.

These chemicals are commonly referred to as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).

VOCs released in BP’s oil disaster are toxic and have chronic health effects.

Dr Soto, who is Yerkes’ doctor, is finding high levels of toxic chemicals in every one of the patients he is testing.

“I’m regularly finding between five and seven VOCs in my patients,” Dr Soto told Al Jazeera. “These patients include people not directly involved in the oil clean-up, as well as residents that do not live right on the coast. These are clearly related to the oil disaster.”

While there are many examples of acute exposures, Dr Soto’s main concern is that most residents who are being exposed will only show symptoms later.

“I’m concerned with the illnesses like cancer and brain degeneration for the future,” he told Al Jazeera. “This is very important because a lot of the population down here may not have symptoms. But people are unaware they are ingesting chemicals that are certainly toxic to humans and have significant effect on the brain and hormonal systems.”

The toxic compounds in the oil and dispersants are liposoluble, meaning they have a high affinity for fat, said Dr Soto.

Dr Soto continued: “The human brain is 70 per cent fat. And these will similarly affect the immune cells, intestinal tract, breast, thyroid, prostate, glands, organs, and systems. This is also why this is so significant for children.”

Exceeding thresholds

In March the US National Institutes of Health launched a long-range health study of workers who helped clean up after BP’s oil disaster.

According to the NIH, 55,000 clean-up workers and volunteers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida will be checked for health problems, and participants will be followed for up to 10 years.

The study is funded by NIH, which received a $10m “gift” from BP to run the study. BP claims not to be involved in the study, which will cost $34m over the next five years.

But the study focusses mainly on people who participated in the clean-up.

John Gooding, a resident of Pass Christian, Mississippi, began having health problems shortly after the oil spill started. He has become sicker with each passing month, and has moved inland in an effort to escape

Mississippi resident John Gooding moved away from the coast to minimise his exposure to toxic chemicals [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

continuing exposure to the chemicals.

“I can’t live at my home address anymore because it’s too close to the coast,” Gooding told Al Jazeera. “I’m hypersensitive to the pollution, and there is a constant steady chemical smell coming off the Gulf. Even both my dogs had seizures and died.”

Gooding suffers respiratory problems, seizures, and myriad other heath effects. He has filed a claim with BP in hopes of being compensated for his health problems, but it has been denied.

BP hired attorney Kenneth Feinberg and his Washington-based firm, Feinberg Rozen, to manage their compensation fund. BP has paid the firm $850,000 a month to administer the $20bn compensation fund for Gulf residents and fishermen affected by the disaster.

The fund was set up after negotiations between BP and the Obama administration, but over recent months there have been growing concerns among the Gulf Coast’s residents that Feinberg is limiting compensation funds to claimants in order to decrease BP’s liability.

Feinberg told citizen journalism group Bridge the Gulf that he will be calling on “independent experts” to review the validity of the approximately 30 health claims that are currently “in limbo”. Feinberg was unable to name the independent experts, and did not elaborate on the process used to pick them. 

In a previous interview, Feinberg said he had received approximately 200 health claims and denied them all for lack of documentation.

“As long as we have people making excuses for them [BP], they’ll continue to get away with it,” Gooding told Al Jazeera, while walking along a Mississippi beach covered in tar balls and dead birds.

Gooding is visibly sick, and chemicals that are used in oil dispersants have been found in his blood, but he won’t go to the doctor.

“I don’t want to put my family in debt, so I’m weighing my options,” he said, “I don’t have health insurance, but I do have life insurance.”

“We were recently in DC with those people protesting the Tar Sands pipeline,” he said. “I was telling those people living near the proposed pipeline, ‘We are your future, because when you have oil spills, this is what your life is going to look like.’”

Dispersants will continue to be used

The US Coast Guard held an Area Contingency Plan meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi on September 7 to discuss the lessons of the BP disaster.

Oil and sheen on a beach in Mississippi, September 2011 [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

Al Jazeera asked Coast Guard Captain John Rose, a sector commander, what has changed regarding the Coast Guard’s dispersant use policy since April 20, 2010.

“We were pre-authorised to use it before, but now we have to get permission from the higher-ups. But it is still in the plan for how we will respond to oil spills in the future,” he said.

During the meeting, Captain Rose continuously referred to the use of dispersants as a “scientific tool” that is “effective in keeping oil from reaching beaches and wildlife”.

Charles Taylor, a resident of nearby Bay St Louis, stood up and announced, “I’ve had bloody diarrhoea nonstop for 45 days, I’m anemic and dehydrated. I’ve had VOC tests done and have ethylbenzene, m,p-Xylene, and methelpentates in my blood”.

None of the Coast Guard personnel would address Taylor’s concerns, saying that the purpose of the meeting was not to discuss BP.

Taylor asked Captain Rose and the other Coast Guard personnel on the panel, “How much money has BP given you folks? Because it appears to us, who are having health problems, you are being silenced from addressing the dispersant and health issues”.

Inadequate compensation

Untold numbers of Gulf Coast residents continue to struggle with health issues and lack of adequate compensation from BP.

Joseph Yerkes is concerned about his future. ”I’m financially destroyed, and my health is bad,” he said. “I’m having to cut off parts of my treatment because I can’t afford it all, and I’m just trying to survive.”

“I’m one step away from being homeless, and not being able to support my daughter and myself,” Yerkes added.

Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail

See a photo gallery of the current oil leaks in the Gulf of Mexico.

13th August, 2011

Oil is seeping into the North Sea after a platform flow line in the seabed sprung a leak, dumping several hundred barrels of oil into the water, according to the British subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell and a Scottish official.

The spill, announced by the company on Friday, is in the central North Sea area known as the Gannet field, about 112 miles east of Aberdeen, Scotland, and has resulted in a sheen of oil on the water’s surface about 20 miles long and 2.5 miles wide, the company said. As of Friday night “leakage of oil has been considerably reduced,” according to a press release posted on the Shell Web site. There was no indication that the leak had been fully stopped.

These corporations, if they were individual human beings, would be locked up for life. Instead, they continue raking in the big bucks. Human rights abuses, murder, war, eco disasters, and animal exploitation keep these evil companies raking in the green. Prepare to be disgusted.

I don’t think the list is in any particular order. Even if you don’t agree with all of them (eg. the cigarette company) most of them are legit horrible. I’m posting a summary but I recommend reading the full article: http://brainz.org/15-deadliest-us-corporations/

1. Chevron : (then Texaco) discharged 18 billion gallons of toxic water into the rain forests of Ecuador without any remediation, destroying the livelihoods of local farmers and sickening indigenous populations. Chevron was responsible for the death of several Nigerians who protested the company’s polluting, exploiting presence in the Nigerian Delta. Chevron paid the local militia, known for its human rights abuses, to squash the protests, and even supplied them with choppers and boats. The military opened fire on the protesters, then burned their villages to the ground.  
2. DeBeers : was knowingly funding violent guerrilla movements in Angola, Sierra Nevada, and the Congo with its diamond purchases. In Botswana, DeBeers has been blamed for the “clearing” of land to be mined for diamonds — including the forcible removal of indigenous peoples who had lived there for thousands of years. The government allegedly cut off the tribe’s water supplies, threatened, tortured and even hanged resisters.
3. Tyson : Even if you don’t care about the horrendous animal abuse that has been documented in Tyson’s factory farms, you have to flinch at Tyson’s appalling environmental abuses and workers’ rights violation- Tyson has allowed e coli tainted beef to enter the food supply. A recent study showed that Tyson’s chickens were the most salmonella-and-campylobactor filled poultry of all the major suppliers and has even been accused of human trafficking to supply themselves with cheap labor.  
4. Smith & Wesson : In a study of the top ten guns involved in crime in the U.S., the first was the Smith & Wesson .38 Special.
5. Phillip Morris : is the largest manufacturer of cigarettes in the U.S.
6. Haliburton : is a huge “oilfield services” company, profited big time from the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq when Cheney called in his boys to quell burning oil wells — and to “help” the Iraq oil ministry pump and distribute oil. Haliburton has also been implicated in countless oil spills, including the BP disaster of 2010. 
7. Coca Cola : corporation has wrought devastation in India, where its factories use up to one million liters of water per day, leaving tens of thousands of nearby residents dry during the drought months. Then the factories dispose of the wastewater improperly, contaminating whatever water is left.  A lawsuit in 2001 accused Coca Cola of hiring paramilitaries in Columbia which suppressed unionization in the cola plant there through intimidation, torture and murder.
8. Pfizer : the largest pharmaceutical corporation in the U.S., pleaded guilty in 2009 to the largest health care fraud in U.S. history. Pfizer decided to use Nigerian children as guinea pigs. In 1996, Pfizer traveled to Kano, Nigeria to try out an experimental antibiotic on third-world diseases such as measles, cholera, and bacterial meningitis. They gave trovafloxacin to approximately 200 children. Dozens of them died in the experiment, while many others developed mental and physical deformities. According to the EPA, Pfizer can also proudly claim to be among the top ten companies in America causing the most air pollution.
9. ExxonMobil : is perhaps best known for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill which resulted in 11 million gallons of oil contaminating Prince William Sound. But they have also been responsible for a huge oil spill in Brooklyn and for aiding in the decline of Russia’s critically endangered grey whale because of drilling in its habitat. The Political Economy Research Institute ranks ExxonMobil sixth among corporations emitting airborne pollutants in the United States.
10. Caterpillar : supplies the Israeli army with bulldozers which are used to demolish Palestinian homes — sometimes with the people still inside. In 2003 a Caterpillar bulldozer ran over and killed Rachel Corrie, an American protesting in Gaza who stood in front of the tractor to prevent the destruction of a Palestinian home.
11. Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Baily : “The Cruelest Show on Earth” is famous for its abuse of wild animals.
12. Monsanto : Monsanto’s list of evils includes creating the “terminator” seed which creates plants which never fruit or flower so that farmers must purchase them anew yearly, lobbying to have “hormone-free” labels removed from the labels of milk and infant milk replacer (through bovine growth hormone is believed to be a cancer-accelerator) as well as a wide range of environmental and human health violations associated with use of Monsanto’s poisons — most notably “Agent Orange.”
13. Nestle : crimes against man and nature include massive deforestation in Borneo — the habitat of the critically endangered orangutan — to grow palm oil, and buying milk from farms illegally-seized by a despot in Zimbabwe. Nestle attracted worldwide boycott efforts for urging mothers in third-world countries to use their infant milk replacer instead of breastfeeding, without warning them of the possible negative effects. Supposedly, Nestle hired women to dress as nurses to hand out free infant formula, which was frequently mixed with contaminated water, or the children starved when the formula ran out and their mothers could not afford more and their breast milk had already dried up from disuse.
14. British Petroleum : Who can forget 2010’s oil rig explosion in the Gulf Coast which killed 11 workers and thousands of birds, sea turtles, dolphins and other animals, effectively destroying the fishing and tourism industry in the region? This was not BP’s first crime against nature. In fact, between January 1997 and March 1998, BP was responsible for a whopping 104 oil spills.
15. Dyncorp : is best known for its brutality in impoverished countries, for trafficking in child sex slaves, for slaughtering civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for training rebels in Haiti. This privatized military company is often hired by the U.S. government to protect American interests overseas — and so the government can claim no responsibility for Dyncorp’s actions. 

So yeah.

verbalresistance:

Nearly a year after the oil disaster began, Gulf Coast residents are sick, and dying from BP’s toxic chemicals.

“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.

“I’m scared of what I’m finding. These cyclic compounds intermingle with the Corexit [dispersants] and generate other cyclic compounds that aren’t good. Many have double bonds, and many are on the EPA’s danger list. This is an unprecedented environmental catastrophe.”

Aguinaga’s health has been in dramatic decline.

“I have terrible chest pain, at times I can’t seem to get enough oxygen, and I’m constantly tired with pains all over my body,” Aguinaga explained, “At times I’m pissing blood, vomiting dark brown stuff, and every pore of my body is dispensing water.”

And Aguinaga’s friend Vallian is now dead.

“After we got back from our vacation in Florida, Merrick went to work for a company contracted by BP to clean up oil in Grand Isle, Louisiana,” Aguinaga said of his 33-year-old physically fit friend.

“Aside from some gloves, BP provided no personal protection for them. He worked for them for two weeks and then died on August 23. He had just got his first paycheck, and it was in his wallet, uncashed, when he died.”

Read More: al-jazeera special feature

Fucking corporate assholes, spread this- drop BP stocks, let them know we won’t take their bullshit, fuck their profits, make them pay for this :@