Dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico - A Toxicologist Speaks Out

The bumbling Thad Allen allowed dispersants when it was obvious it was a method of limiting BP's barrel/day liability. Further, the EPA administrator foolishly tried to severly limit, or stop their use, and it appears she was told to let BP do what they want within reason. Now the chemical and oil mixture is suspended in the water and invisible to the naked eye. BP begins the propaganda and bribery cycle to simply claim the oil has "disappeared". The Government will buy into this since POLITICALLY they want out! Period. Elections are coming and their jobs and power are much more important than some fishermen and recreaction sites along the Gulf.

A weak President and a bumbling Incident Manager now begin sweeping the entire affair "under the Gulf".

Dr Shaw 17 min talk was an excellent summary of critical Gulf Coast issues ranging from a lack of regulation of propriety chemical products, to human and environmental toxicology. Plus, she even managed to find time to plug her own research interests in flame retardants and marine mammals - awesome time budgeting!

Killing the well looks within reach now, but understanding and remediating environmental impacts is going to be much harder, take much longer and, if it's done right, cost a lot more.

Here's a URL with two charts to ponder:

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10388&page=91

The many chemicals that make up oil, dispersant and their degradation by products will cycle among 4 partitions, water column, atmosphere, biosphere and biota. At the top of the food chain, we humans need to be very mindful of bioconcentration of toxins up trophic levels in the biota partition. Tough enough to put numbers in the boxes and fluxes, but BP's shameful "cover-their-own-ass" secrecy has complicated the process by preventing independent scientists from collecting crucial baseline data. Consequently, there will be a lot of needless uncertainty, which will work to BP's advantage in court, and impact more liabilities than just EPA fines.

Let me hazard a little prediction. BP will carefully continue to nurture this uncertainty, with same tried and true PR strategy used by big tobacco and climate change deniers, and others. First, they will quietly fund some technically qualified individuals to go forth and establish captive think tanks with edifying, wonkish names. Next, these institutions will begin to cherry pick the scientific literature for any scintilla of research, no matter how marginal, that minimizes the environmental and human health effects of oil spills. Real science fits the curve to the data. The captive think tanks will turn this upside down and fit their cherries to their preexisting, corporate drawn, curve. Press releases will drafted and sent to print and electronic media (desperate for any material to help fill the 24 hr news cycle). In a short time the captive think tanks will have enough material to cite each other. This creates a "talking points" noise machine that easily drowns out genuine scientific and policy debate.