Evacuate The Gulf Coast Now!

Dave Hodges of the "Common Sense program wrote this article.

Next week marks the sixth anniversary of the “Great Gulf Coast Holocaust”. The media would have you believe it is over. It is not! I guarantee that I am the only writer who is publishing a story on this subject. However, it is difficult to believe based upon the evidence, that the Gulf oil spill is not the number one cause of death in America. This is the most ignore health story of its type. Based upon the epidemiological evidence, the Gulf should immediately be evacuated. The poison is in the air, it is in the water, it is in the food, and it is in the people. Children growing up in the Gulf region, now, should expect a 20-30% lower lifespan than the rest of the country. And the Gulf is still leaking oil. 

The people in the Gulf are in grave danger. The health reports, the geological reports and the weather reports are suggestive of one thing, the people of the Gulf are looking at greatly reduced lifespans. If they move now, they could mitigate some of the effects. The key word is some.

From the scientific evidence that I have seen,  if I lived in the Gulf, I would immediately leave to a safer location.

Corexit

There are many quiet voices, fearing repraisal who say that the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, is still leaking oil. There are others, shrimp fisherman out of work, who are hired by BP to help with Corexit dispersal missions. Over five years after the accident, Corexit is still being sprayed at night by BP, for profit, and they are using people from the Gulf who have lost their incomes and need the work. They will speak privately, but are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their income. I have spoken with a half dozen over the last three years. These Corexit spraying missions are endangering the quality of the air, the water, the land and the food. The Gulf is catastrophe of Bibllical proportions waiting to consume millions with related health effects caused by Corexit. Originally, the EPA told BP, Nalco and Goldman Sachs that they could not use Corexit on the oil spill. BP gave the EPA the big middle finger. Further, as I covered 5 years ago, the Corexit does not disperse the oil, it submerges it into the water column. This sucks all the CO2 out of the water and has a devastating impact on the environment and the species inhabitating this environment.

There were strong and early indications that the use of Corexit, combined with the leaking oil, were producing, both long term and short term, catastrophic environmental and individual health effects. Oil and Corexit, used to “disperse” the oil spill have impacted untold numbers of Gulf residents’ health. Additionally, both the food supply and the food chain are being adversely impacted. The air and the subsequent evapotranspiration cycle has been irreversibly altered which, in turn, impacts the water table and the safety of water supplies as well as the safety of crops. The most devastating finding relates the events of the oil spill to the phenomena of the ever-widening Louisiana sinkholes and the related underground explosions as well as the very high concentration of toxic and highly flammable methane in the air and in the water.

One of the major threats to the Gulf Coast comes from an imperiled food supply which is the result from the explosion on the Deep Water Horizon oil rig.

Dr. Wilma Subra, a MacAuthur (Genius) Award winning chemist.who investigated the effects of corexit on humans very early on, stated that the corexit was “in the air, the water, and the food we consume”. Dr. Subra test many people in the Gulf and found Benzine levels at 65 times the level that one would expect. This speaks to the genocide that is coming to the Gulf with regard to the contraction of various cancers and other related diseases… “the health impacts that were and are continuing to be caused by the BP crude and dispersants. We have a very, very large and very, very sick population.”

Corexit is banned in 17 countires. Because it is manufactured by NALCO, both BP and Goldman Sachs profit ad the people suffer.

The Tainted Food Supply

It was known very early on that the Gulf Coast food supply was severely compromised and the health of the residents was in jeopardy, despite government denials and mainstream media cover-ups. A case in point, while dining with his family at Vinnie’s Raw Bar Restaurant in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, Matthew Robertson found oil in his seafood. While covering the story,  WBTV reporter, Susan Baustista, also acknowledged there was a black substance stuck to the inside of Robertson’s sea food. Additionally, Channel 8, Fox News, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was told by Vinnie’s Raw Bar restaurant’s manager that he did, indeed, confirm the customer’s story and says he’s had problems getting oyster shipments because of contamination resulting from the oil spill, unfortunately, this station saw fit to scrub the report from its website. However, similar warnings regarding the region’s food safety are appearing up and down the local Gulf Coast media on such stations as WLOX TV in Gulfport, MS. Yet, Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, etc., have not run one credible story on the dangers of food toxicity in the Gulf’s food chain. Granted, the abovementioned cases represent just a few anecdotal cases which are representative of tens of thousands of accounts. However, anecdotal evidence is not science and these cases could be discounted as the exception and not the rule. Yet, the largely ignored voices of scientists echo these anecdotal claims and they do so with hard, verifiable data.

The Quiet Voices of Science Assess Gulf Food Safety

Scientists at The University of Southern Mississippi and Tulane University have found oil in the post-larvae of blue crabs entering coastal marshes along the Gulf Coast signaling that oil may be entering estuarine food chains. Dr. Perry observed that “I have never seen anything like this.” Larvae are at the bottom of the food chain. Lesser life forms, are consumed by life forms which are higher on the food chain and the toxic effects of the Corexit will bioaccumulate throughout the food chain. This conclusion echoed the findings of lab samples taken by scientists at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab shows oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster has made its way into the Gulf food chain as well. These particular scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico which is a clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they have easily entered the food chain. These studies and other similar studies remain unchallenged by the authorities with regard to methodology and results. In short, the Obama administration is choosing to ignore these credible scientists by simply repeating the mantra that “all is well” in the Gulf of Mexico.

Potential Effects on Life Span in the Gulf

Kim Anderson’s Oregon State University (OSU) researchers, from the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences, began a test-retest comparative analysis for the carcinogenic contaminant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and its biodegradable partner, OPAHs, which appears after the application of Corexit and subsequent exposure to ultraviolet rays. Stunningly, the OSU researchers found a 40 fold increase in these carcinogenic compounds in the comparative test-retest period. The OSU findings replicate the conclusions of Mace Barron et al regarding the toxicity of Corexit and its use in the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The Exxon Valdez oil spill and subsequent clean-up activities provides the only case study in the history of the United States involving significant exposure to the types of toxins discussed in this article as the result of an oil spill. Interestingly, Anderson’s Oregon State University’s original data went missing forcing the research team to begin again. It is clear that somebody did not want this data to reach the public.

Findings, related to the longevity of the Exxon Valdez clean-up workers, are very disturbing as the collective lifespan statistics, for the Corexit exposed cleanup crews, revealed that the average life expectancy is a mere 51 years of age and nearly all of the Exxon Valdez clean-up workers are dead. These findings can leave little doubt that BP’s use of Corexit has seriously compromised the collective life span of Gulf Coast residents. I can draw no other conclusion than to state that the events in the Gulf, to date, constitute a slow-burn genocidal event in which, depending on the age at first  exposure to the Corexit, the oil and the resulting methane concentrations, will see life spans in the impacted areas decline by as much as 25-50% with regard to longevity based upon the life-span figures from the Exxon Valdez clean-up workers. I believe that based upon the data, it is reasonable to assume that within one short generation, the life expectancy of the Gulf will rival the worst of the third world.

“Kindra Arnesen  lives in Plaquemines Parish, where Louisiana becomes more ocean than land as it juts out into the Gulf. Her community was hit hard by Katrina and was still rebuilding five years later, but Arnesen describes it as “a very healthy community, a thriving community” before the BP disaster. Her husband is a 45-year-old commercial fisherman and she was shocked to see his health decline a few weeks after the disaster. She and her children also soon became  sick with chronic illnesses, and so did many others in her community.

Kindra says, “This is not something that we’re used to here. Our kids are bayou kids. They’re tough.” But she says the change in children’s health has been the most striking: “We have kids down here that are now over 80% bald because their hair has fallen out. Their noses are bleeding… I’ve watched these kids go from healthy, thriving children to a shell of themselves.” Her 11-year-old daughter has been ill for several years now, “She suffers from headaches, nausea, upper respiratory issues, heart palpitations, chest pains, fatigue.”

Dr. Michael Robichaux, a physician in Raceland, Louisiana, began to see many patients with similar symptoms and then discovered that, “People from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were all experiencing almost identical problems.” Robichaux sought out help, and was able to fund a detox clinic to treat chemical illnesses. The treatment improved the health of many patients, but the funds ran out. A former state senator, Robichaux is extremely frustrated with the BP settlement process related to public health impacts:

“Unfortunately the courts have let us down… I have not seen a single person who has gotten a nickel from BP for any of the illnesses. I’m talking about illnesses that are going to last for the rest of their lives”.

THESE PEOPLE ARE DYING!   

EVACUATE THE GULF COAST NOW!