Despite the official spill over mantra regarding the BP Gulf oil disaster, it is becoming abundantly clear that it is anything but over as more and more evidence mounts of oxygen dead zones, oil and dispersant in seafood and the chemical stench and oil residue that is still painfully visible along and in the gulf. Not only is the damage to the environment ongoing, but the full impact on human health will be unknown for years. However, there is every reason to be very concerned, particularly for our most vulnerable populations including pregnant women and children (something I pointed out back in early June). Dr. Gina Solomon of the NRDC explains further why this is so crucially important and why we need to change our assumptions about how we view this problem:
The FDA used faulty assumptions (described below) to determine how much contamination is OK to eat in Gulf seafood. This means that they set the bar too high and lower levels of contaminants could pose a risk to vulnerable populations – like pregnant women, children and communities who eat a lot of Gulf seafood.
By using an adult average body weight of 176 pounds the FDA does not adequately protect children, or even many women
The average body weight of a 4-6 year old child is about 47 pounds and half of American women weigh less than about 155 pounds. These smaller people would be getting a bigger dose of contaminants per pound of bodyweight than the FDA is estimating they’re getting. Not all of us are big men, after all.
FDA fails to account for the increased vulnerability of the developing fetus and young children
Children are particularly vulnerable to contaminants in seafood because their bodies are still developing, they ingest a larger portion of contaminants relative to their size, and they often don’t process chemicals as well as adults. Human epidemiologic studies have found that fetuses can’t clear the genetic damage from PAHs as easily, and also that babies may be at increased risk of neurological effects from these chemicals.
There is nothing new in this one size fits all approach to measuring human impact. For years Reference Man, who was
was born in 1974, but he remains perpetually between 20 and 30 years old. He stands 5 feet seven inches (170 cm), weighs 154 pounds (70 kilograms) and is a Caucasian from Western Europe or North America.
was used to assess the impact of X-rays on the human body. It apparently didn’t occur to researchers that what was good for Reference Man might be lethal to women or children. It is unfortunate to see that ignorance once again playing out in data assumptions about the gulf.
So it turns out that Mommies are still underpaid and guess what? It’s all the fault of feminists! Yup no doubt about it, couldn’t possibly be due to discrimination dating back to the dawn of patriarchy. According to The Atlantic,
New data shows that, despite feminists’ best efforts, women have still failed to reach equality in the job market.
Wow, like I feel so inadequate. The NYT continues the bashing here:
Women and men with similar qualifications — age, education, experience — are much more likely to be treated similarly today than in the past. The pay gap between them, while still not zero, has shrunk to just a few percentage points.Yet once you look beyond the tidy comparisons of supposedly identical men and women, the picture is much less sunny. There are still only 15 Fortune 500 companies with a female chief executive. Men dominate the next rungs of management in most fields, too. Over all, full-time female workers make a whopping 23 percent less on average than full-time male workers…
…The fact that the job market has evolved in this way is no accident. It’s a result of policy choices. As Jane Waldfogel, a Columbia University professor who studies families and work, says, “American feminists made a conscious choice to emphasize equal rights and equal opportunities, but not to talk about policies that would address family responsibilities.”
In many ways, the choice was shrewd. The feminist movement has been fabulously successful fighting for antidiscrimination laws that require men and women to be treated equally. These laws have not eliminated the blatant sexism of past decades — think “Mad Men” — but they have beaten back much of it.
As a result, outright sexism is no longer the main barrier to gender equality. The main barrier is the harsh price most workers pay for pursuing anything other than the old-fashioned career path.
“Women do almost as well as men today,” Ms. Waldfogel said, “as long as they don’t have children.”
The wrinkle here is that according to the U.S. Census over 80% of US women have kids by the time they’re 44, which means the majority of women hit an economic Maternal Wall and don’t “do almost as well as men.”
Blame it on the feminists? What a load of poop.
Disclaimer: I wrote this post while making dinner for my family, go on, try to pull off that trick you male CEO’s!
When military conflict occurs, just because the fighting ends does not mean the war is over for the people who live there as these two articles about Iraq so sadly illustrate:
Three decades of wars, massacres and sectarian killings have left Iraq with as many as a million widows, by Iraqi government count…
…In 2008 the government set up the Directorate of Social Care for Women that is now gradually taking over the payment of stipends from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, which was widely accused of inefficiency and corruption.
However, Hameed, the directorate’s chief, complains that she lacks the funds to efficiently serve areas beyond the capital and lacks the authority to introduce reform and eradicate corruption in the ministry departments handling widows…
…poverty is driving some Iraqi women into prostitution, both in Iraq and in neighboring Jordan and Syria, home to the Arab world’s largest Iraqi refugee communities.
“Many of Iraq’s neighbors are exploiting Iraqi women,” said activist Suzan Kazim Kashkoul.
Also, she and other advocates say, the post-U.S. invasion violence has shrunk the pool of potential husbands for widows as well as single women over 30, and in the sectarian-charged postwar atmosphere, Sunni-Shiite marriages have become rare. The economy is in trouble yet the housing market is hot, making housing unaffordable for many.
Results of a population-based epidemiological study organized by Malak Hamdan and Chris Busby are published tomorrow in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health (IJERPH) based in Basle, Switzerland. They show increases in cancer, leukemia and infant mortality and perturbations of the normal human population birth sex ratio significantly greater than those reported for the survivors of the A-Bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Results of a survey in Jan/Feb 2010 of 711 houses and more than 4000 individuals in Fallujah show that in the five years following the 2004 attacks by USA-led forces there has been a 4-fold increase in all cancer. Interestingly, the spectrum of cancer is similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionizing radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout. By comparing the sample population rates to the cancer rates in Egypt and Jordan, researchers found there has been a 38-fold increase in leukemia (20 cases) almost a 10-fold increase in female breast cancer (12 cases) and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults.
Based on 16 cases in the 5-year period, the 12-fold increases in childhood cancer in those aged 0-14 were particularly marked. The cancer and leukemia increases were all in younger people than would normally be expected. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1000 births which compares with a value of 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. An important result is that the sex-ratio, which in normal populations is always 1050 boys born per 1000 girls was seriously reduced in the group born immediately after 2005, one year after the conflict: in this group the sex ratio was 860.
Over the last few days, more attention seems to be focused on potential health problems as a result of the Gulf oil disaster. One of the most informed voices on this issue is Dr. Riki Ott (I interviewed her for this article several weeks ago). In these 2 videos, one with Keith Olbermann and one with Rachel Maddow, she gives us a good understanding about why this is so urgent. Particularly note in her interview with Maddow where she talks about “dose plus host” defining the problem which really explains why my concern for pregnant women and children is right on target, the point being that pregnant women and children are particularly vulnerable and thus more likely to suffer ill effects from this disaster.
Maya Rodriguez’ report about the “oil effects you can see and the ones you can’t” and interview chemist Wilma Subra also makes some important points that add to our understanding of the unfolding health disaster:
Rodriguez also reports about concerns regarding the vulnerability of water supplies:
And well worth the read, Gina Solomon at NRDC explains here why the BP interpretation of air quality reports doesn’t pass the smell test. Finally, see The Other ED–Endocrine Disruption, an interview with Theo Colborn that I posted the other day.
Last week, in an article published by Truthout, I examined the potential for human reproductive harm as a result of the Gulf oil disaster. It was not until this week however that the EPA finally released information regarding what chemicals are in the dispersants, a crucial first step in definitively assessing harm. The manufacturer, Nalco, had claimed that some of the ingredients were trade secrets. But they were happy to explain in general terms on their website what was in the dispersants,
“Corexit contains six primary ingredients. Examples of everyday products with specific ingredients in common with COREXIT 9500 include:
• One ingredient is used as a wetting agent in dry gelatin, beverage mixtures, and fruit juice drinks.
• A second ingredient is used in a brand-name dry skin cream and also in a body shampoo.
• A third ingredient is found in a popular brand of baby bath liquid.
• A fourth ingredient is found extensively in cosmetics and is also used as a surface-active agent and emulsifier for agents used in food contact.
• A fifth ingredient is used by a major supplier of brand name household cleaning products for “soap scum” removal.
• A sixth ingredient is used in hand creams and lotions, odorless paints and stain blockers.”
Really? We drink this stuff and put it on our babies? Must be harmless, right? So why not just tell us the exact ingredients??
Finally however, the public and planetary right to know has triumphed over greed. Two different versions of Corexit have been used. The New York Times provides this description of the two products:
“Corexit 9527, used in lesser quantities during the earlier days of the spill response, is designated a chronic and acute health hazard by EPA. The 9527 formula contains 2-butoxyethanol, pinpointed as the cause of lingering health problems experienced by cleanup workers after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and propylene glycol, a commonly used solvent.”
“Corexit 9500, described by Pajor as the “sole product” Nalco has manufactured for the Gulf since late April, contains propylene glycol and light petroleum distillates, a type of chemical refined from crude oil. Nalco had previously declined to identify the third hazardous substance in the 9500 formula, but EPA’s website reveals it to be dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, a detergent and common ingredient in laxatives.”
Memo to self: avoid laxatives at all costs. But seriously, what the heck are those chemicals and what can they do? Tom Philpott has written the most thorough description that I’ve seen thus far:
“We finally know the main two dispersants that BP and the U.S. government are using to treat the ongoing Gulf spill. Both, by their maker’s own admission, have the “potential to bioconcentrate,” and both have “moderate toxicity to early life stages of fish, crustaceans, and mollusks,” according to a study by Exxon, the company that originally developed them. Their use may be the least-bad course, given the importance of minimizing oil’s effect on coastal wetlands. But a little digging into the chemical makeup of these two substances, which are being dumped in vast quantities into the Gulf, reveals that they could potentially do far more harm than good, both to the Gulf and to humans who later eat from it…
…substances that bioconcentrate tend to move from water into fish, where they can do damage to the fish itself, as well as be passed on to predator fish – and on up the food chain, to human eaters…
…And just how toxic is this stuff? The data sheets for both products contain this shocker: “No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product” – meaning testing their safety for humans”…
…According to their data sheets, both 9500 and 9527 are composed of three potentially hazardous substances. They share two in common, organic sulfonic acid salt and propylene glycol. In addition to those two, Corexit 9500 contains something called “Distillates, petroleum, hydrotreated light,” while Corexit 9527 contains 2-Butoxyethanol…
…Petroleum distillates and 2-Butoxyethanol are both solvents; neither are substances you’d excitedly dump into a vibrant ecosytem. According to itsInternational Chemical Scorecard, 2-Butoxyethanol “may be absorbed” by the skin; causes “cough, dizziness, drowsiness, headache, nausea, and weakness” when inhaled; and “abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting” when ingested. For petroleum distillates, the International Chemical Scorecard has similar indications about exposure for humans, and adds this unsettling line: “The substance is harmful to aquatic organisms.”"
So we know that the dispersants contain toxic substances. It would seem that at the very least, since we’ve already dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of them into the Gulf, that we–meaning presumably a governmental agency tasked with doing such things–should be rigorously monitoring their impact. Don’t hold your breath, or rather, it might be a good idea if you do. NRDC’s Gina Solomon reports that,
“New BP air testing results were posted.. from April 27 – May 26 for benzene, total hydrocarbons, and 2-Butoxyethanol. There’s still no information about other oil-related air toxic chemicals such as naphthalene or hydrogen sulfide, offshore.
The BP sampling plan focuses only on workers on the large ships, and appears to not include monitoring for the people on the approximately 1,500 small fishing boats helping to clean up the spill. These people are dismissed as of “Reduced Priority”on page 4 of the BP sampling plan.
Nearly 70% (275 out of 399) of offshore air samples had detectable levels of hydrocarbons and nearly 1 in 5 (73 out of 399) had levels greater than 10 parts per million (ppm), which is an EPA cutoff level for further investigation.
6 samples exceed 100 ppm which in a previous monitoring summary was labeled as the action limit. This label appears to have been removed in the most recent summary document. No information is given on where these samples, or the 4 found to be between 50 and 100 ppm, were taken.
20 (5%) samples had detectable levels of benzene with measurements up to 0.5 ppm. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) Recommended Exposure Limit (REL) is 0.1 ppm.
20% (29 out of 146) samples had detectable levels of 2-Butoxyethanol with measurements up to 10 ppm. This range encompasses the NIOSH REL for occupational exposure to 2-Butoxyethanol of 5 ppm. The BP document cites the OSHA PEL for 2-Butoxyethanol of 50 ppm, which would not protect workers.”
In other words, it would appear that people working near these chemicals are being at least in some cases exposed to levels that are unacceptable. And those are the priority people, we don’t know about the reduced priority people. (Never mind all those chemicals, let’s just start by forbidding our data collectors from ever referring to anyone as a reduced priority person. And hello? Why is BP monitoring this, that has about as much integrity as putting an embezzler in charge of a bank fraud investigation.)
“The immediate worry is what are called volatile organic compounds, which include chemicals like benzene that can be released in a vapor phase from the oil that’s floating in the water,” Solomon said. “These chemicals can cause acute health effects such as headache, nausea, vomiting, cough, dizziness. The chemicals can also cause longer-term effects, including the potential for miscarriage or low birth weight in pregnant women and risk of cancer over the longer term.”
“So far,” Solomon added, “the levels of these chemicals have been fairly low along the shore lines, so the main concern is for the emergency response workers. But we’re worried that as the oil gets closer to shore the levels of the chemicals in the air will rise.”
So what does all of this mean? Good question. We know that several of the ingredients in these products are harmful. To what extent, we simply don’t know because:
A. They have not been adequately tested for toxicity prior to use.
B. No one has ever taken a wholesale toxic chemical dump in a large body of water on this grand a scale before.
C. There is a concern that by breaking the oil up, the dispersants are making the oil itself, also toxic, harder to clean up.
D. As Solomon notes, the data that we are getting via BP is problematic, making quantifying the damage all the more difficult.
I don’t want to re-hash all the points I made in the Truthout article, but suffice to say, this additional information only confirms my concerns. We know that aquatic life is dying, that wetlands are being grievously harmed, and that people are suffering from a variety of health symptoms. What we don’t know and won’t for quite some time is what the reproductive consequences may be. In the meantime, it is urgent that data be properly collected and made available and that every precaution be made to protect the most vulnerable among us, particularly pregnant women and children.
Addenda: Two additional points that add to the urgency of addressing this issue, via the San Francisco Chronicle:
“In a report written by Anita George-Ares and James R. Clark for Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc. titled “Acute Aquatic Toxicity of Three Corexit Products: An Overview” Corexit 9500 was found to be one of the most toxic dispersal agents ever developed.
According to the Clark and George-Ares report, Corexit mixed with the higher gulf coast water temperatures becomes even more toxic.”
And even more worrisome:
“It seems like damage brought by the oil gusher has spread way beyond the ocean, coastal areas and beaches. Collateral damage now appears to include agricultural damage way inland Mississippi.
A mysterious “disease” has caused widespread damage to plants from weeds to farmed organic and conventionally grown crops. There is very strong suspicion that ocean winds have blown Corexit aerosol plumes or droplets and that dispersants have caused the unexplained widespread damage or “disease”.
There is no other explanation for the crop damage. Everything points to something that has a widespread effect on plants and crops. While no one precisely knows, all the signs point to BP’s use of aerosolized Corexit brought inland by the ocean winds or rain.
Remember acid rain? Now it seems we could have toxic dispersant rain.”
In the Truthout article, I mentioned acid rain as a reason to be concerned that the toxicity of the oil and the dispersants could move inland. At the time, quite honestly I wanted the ramifications of that happening to remain a hypothetical nightmare. It would appear that this may be exactly what is happening, and the implications for our food and water supplies, our health and our lives are very, very bad.
(This blog post is cross-posted from FPN Director Lucinda Marshall’s personal blog, Reclaiming Medusa)
What People Are Saying About FPN:"Thank you for FPN, for your discernment, for pointing out the
discrimination and violence raged against women, for cutting through the
lies and telling it like it is. Your words help a lot to not feel so
alone in all of this, and they bring up my own outrage!"Janie Rezner
Spiritual Feminist Warrior
over as more and more evidence mounts of oxygen dead zones, oil and dispersant in seafood and the chemical stench and oil residue that is still painfully visible along and in the gulf. Not only is the damage to the environment ongoing, but the full impact on human health will be unknown for years. However, there is every reason to be very concerned, particularly for our most vulnerable populations including pregnant women and children (something I pointed out back in early June). Dr. Gina Solomon of the NRDC explains further why this is so crucially important and why we need to change our assumptions about how we view this problem:
