Some Gulf Coast residents are suffering from grim maladies months after they were exposed to the chemical oil dispersants sprayed by BP. “I started to vomit brown, and my pee was brown also,” one man told Al Jazeera. The chemicals that break up oil seem to also be good at breaking up human red blood cells, according to eyewitness reporters by local health care providers. “We have dolphins that are hemorrhaging,” said an EPA whistleblower.
Establishing a direct link between their symptoms and the chemicals dumped on the area is another matter, but residents say their symptoms disappear when they leave town and return when they come back.
“I’m thinking of moving to Costa Rica,” the manager of a seafood business told Al Jazeera. ‘When I leave here I feel better. When I come back I feel bad again. Feeling tired, coughing, sore throat, burning eyes, headaches, just like everyone around here feels.”
BP dispersants ‘causing sickness’ [Al Jazeera]
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Not commenting directly on the story (the article won’t load and I would need more info as to whether it’s true or not anyway) but……. Al Jazeera?? Really???
Like it or not, Al-Jazeera does better investigative reporting with their little finger than all the American news channels put together.
That’s because American media outlets are all owned by big corporations who are more interested in turning a profit that reporting the truth.
Well, Al-Jazeera has it’s own agenda too. Everybody does.
This situation is only peripheral to their interests in the middle east, so there’s no real reason for them to resort to out and out fabrication. If you do have a political agenda, a great way to establish credibility is to accurately report items that don’t bear on your agenda. If I lived on the Gulf coast, I’d be looking to move out.
The stupid infidel American pigdog media won’t report this, praise Allah.
ManBearPig approved this comment.
Now about the story…got the article to load. Very interesting…would like to see a relatively impartial study corroboraing the claims. Seems entirely plausable, I’m just a little suspicious that this is the first place I’m reading these accounts.
youtube dude. The videos are there. Scientists and federal officials alike. OilFlorida has the updated news dang near every day on there.
It’s a freakin Massacre.
Al Jazeera English is the best world news organization on the planet right now, having eclipsed even BBC World. Maybe you’d know that if you got out of your stupid American bubble once in a while.
I agree…very informative stuff. It’s real news.
No one else investigated it. Or at least no one else published it.
http://www.wtfcnn.com explains it all…
Who would have thought that it would be a bad idea to put MORE chemicals into the ocean to clean up other chemicals…
Maybe they took the phrase “You fight fire with fire” a little too literally?
Cause when I see trash in my room, my first thought is:
“Let’s throw some different trash on it and see what happens
”
You throw a ping pong ball at it. What happened? Nothing. Yeah, your screwed!
I should have tried a flaming ping pong ball…
The guidelines if a boat owner spills a few gallons of fuel are adamant that we NEVER use detergent or anything else to break it up. It has to be cleaned from the surface and breaking it up allows it to mix with the water doing far more damage (and making it impossible to clean..).
All that made sense to me, so I was shocked when they immediately started pouring dispersant into this mess. I must admit that the equation would be dramatically different with 5000 feet of water instead of 30.
“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” – H. L. Mencken
Al Jazeera? Seriously? Why don’t you just source from the Weekly World News or The Onion?
Because the first is a legitimate news organization, the second is no longer published in the US, and the last is satire.
A better question might have been – “Al Jazeera? Seriously? Why don’t you just source from the CNN or The Washington Post?” Then the response might have been, “Because they didn’t investigate.
Exactly. American news corporations, like American politicians, refuse to say anything critical of big business. This is particularly true of oil companies.
With all due respect, you’re an infidel.
Al Jazeera English is the best world news organization on the planet right now, having eclipsed even BBC World. Maybe you’d know that if you got out of your retard American bubble once in a while.
In the above thread, you wrote “stupid bubble,” here you wrote “retard bubble.”
So which is it, stupid or retard?
How incredibly bigoted and small-minded of you.
Disliking a corporation grounds for bigotry now?
Yes, I’m sure he just dislikes them as a corporation because of their business practices and nothing else.
Al Jazeera is a news organization headquartered in an oil rich country (Qatar) that stands to benefit from discrediting American oil. Plus it generally hates Americans. It’s not bigotry, it’s mutual dislike.
BP isn’t American Oil, but I see where you’re coming from.
True, but they were drilling American Oil Fields so…..
Your claim that Al Jazeera hates America is absolutely without merit. The phrase “hates America” is constantly thrown around whenever someone criticizes one of the U.S.’s many major problems. Have you ever heard of the phrase “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”? Maybe we criticize, not because we hate, but because we want this country to be great, as so many people claim we are now.
If you’re worried about Oil-related companies influencing the news, then you can’t watch anything on any of the major networks today. They all advertise for big oil, arms companies like Boeing, BAE, etc.
If you want independent news, try democracynow.org.
It’s like you all have never heard of “Profits Over People”. Please! It’s printed on our money, and children say it every day before school begins.
Indeed. It’s just before the 2-Minute Hate.
oh man that reminds me, I need to go buy a 2010 Chevy Tahoe
While your at it, take a look at Jay Leno’s Blastolene Special
2 MPG FTW!!!
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/slideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=1166662#9
Where’s Captain Hindsight when we need him!
He should have been there!
The Al Jazeera article is absolute crap (the issue it’s talking about might be real, however).
An example:
“”Given this evidence, it should be no surprise that solvents are also notoriously toxic to people, something the medical community has long known,” Dr. Ott added.”
I’ll stop drinking water then since all solvents are toxic…
Also, this:
“Naman, the chemist who analyzed the sample, said: “We think that it most likely happened due to the presence of either methanol or methane gas or the presence of the dispersant Corexit.”"
Run some tests!!! It’s not that hard to figure out whether what is in the sample is methane, methanol, or Corexit. Do it, then report about what it actually is…
Also, are local papers reporting on this?
1) I dont think you know what solvents are.
2) As for the second note (as an engineer myself) when a scientist says “we think” or “I think” what they’re saying is that the evidence is pointing towards the conclusion that was made.
Are you suggesting that water isn’t a solvent? It’s a pretty good one, if you ask me…
You must be a mechanical engineer. Any other type would understand that water is a solvent
RE: your second point: as a scientist myself, I must point out that a scientist also says that when he alone thinks that the evidence points to that conclusion. You need multiple scientists in independent labs saying “we think” in order to really go for a conclusion.
What kind of engineer are you? Solvents essentially are something that dissolves something else. Water is an amazing solvent. Specifying *organic* solvents might be slightly more accurate, but there are still organic solvents that aren’t overly toxic by ingestion (ethanol for one).
I have no problems with the “we think” part of what he said. What I do have problems with is that they couldn’t distinguish methane from Corexit (propylene glycol and Dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate per wikipedia’s corexit article). There’s a bit of a difference.
Actually, water is an amazing base. It’s acidity level is low enough to be constituted as such. The fact that it can ‘break down’ material is because of the fact that when something permeable and absorbent will eventually break down due to the oxygen molecules in water.
Now obviously not being a chemist, but to me it seems that if you add something to water it will eventually alter the structure of water, regardless of what it is. Now if you add something, let’s say, oil solvent, then the water has a CHANCE to become toxic to humans, even though in some small studies it has proven to be non-toxic. I have to state though that the last time such thing was proven would be … well a long time ago and with the things having changed the way they have, well, you can draw your own conclusions.
Actually, there is a condition called “water toxicity,” and people can die from it.
Have been reporting on it since JULY. CBS – (CBS) Monday night, the first statewide health survey in Louisiana tracking the health impact of oil spill shows more than 75 workers have been treated for symptoms.
Seven weeks into the oil spill crisis, there is still confusion and uncertainty about how to protect the people cleaning up the mess, reports CBS News medical correspondent Jennifer Ashton. Commercial fisherman George Jackson was overcome by fumes while inspecting boom; BP gave him no protective gear.
“They didn’t supply us with nothing,” says Jackson. “Now they’re starting to disperse gloves and hazmat suits.” —Moved into a FEMA trailer behind his house. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/07/eveningnews/main6558403.shtml
I remember seeing the original article where this “chemist” was claiming that the sample had “exploded”. It looked to me like the man was running a small back room lab (he had food sitting in the lab), and from the break in the separatory funnel he had either broken it himself and wouldn’t admit loosing the sample or had used a cracked separatory funnel and the solvent pressure had cracked it. I am guessing he may have been trying to run a simple “oil and grease ” extraction. (not a very analytic method)
The story goes from talking about specific organic solvents such as petroleum distillates and 2- butoxyethanol and then just uses “solvents” rather than restating all that over and over. You really think the chemist suddenly switches gears and means that all solvents for everything are toxic? Come on. Really.
I’m so glad that CNN, CBS, NBC, FOX, ABC and MSNBC are all over it. Or would be, if only Charlie, Britney, Kim, Lindsey and the cast of Jersey Shore and the Balloon Boy’s Dad weren’t taking up all the space.
Secret government ruin the credibility of the story op?
I can’t even speak on this. Unconscionable.
Because we all had faith that BP was going to do the right thing, and do it well?
BP came out strongly the day the leak was reported to assure everyone, probably before they even tested or measured, that it was leaking 5,000 barrels of oil per day.
Pathological liars(corporations) do not good self-regulators make.
Okay, this piece of “rNews” is from Al Jazeera, which is a mouthpiece for radical Islam. The source cannot be trusted. While I am sure there are still many environmental issues that have to be dealt with in the gulf, NOTHING this rag says can be trusted.
Are you sure about that? Some people would say that Al Jazeera is #2 behind BBC world. I am one of them.
agreed.
And to qualify my statement – I am a fascist gun nut that did 2 tours to Iraq. I still believe this “rag” over anything that you can see on tv (fox, cnn, msnbc, local networks).
Care to qualify your statements with anything that doesn’t come from Faux News?
It’s funny. Like you (and the previous anti-Al Jazeera commentators) who judge based on almost no evidence, I will feel free to judge you as a right-wing, uneducated idiot.
Funny, because if you ask most radical Islamists, they most likely would tell you how much they hate al Jazeera for trying to reach out to the Western world.
On top of that, America’s policy before 9-11 was nothing but praise for the network for being a level head in such an unstable area. Or does the world before 9-11 not exist to you anymore?
I’ve been thinking the same thing as I read the anti-AJ comments. Most govts and RIs in that part of the world intensely dislike AJ for the alternative access to information they give to the people. Prior to 2001 the US govt loved them. They have a strong partnership with BBC and many reporters in common.
Have they made some questionable editorial decisions? Yes IMO. Are they biased? Sure. They talk alot about Middle East news b/c they live there. But show me a news outlet anywhere in the world that isn’t. The NY Post talks alot about NY. In my mind I put them in the same category as Fox or MSNBC in terms of bias, above in terms of being on the ground and talking to people and not being beholden to corporate interests…assuming being beholden to the interests of one Qatari emir cancels out being beholden to a large MNC.
While I agree that the main stream media has become all but useless, as they are beholden to their corporate masters and advertisers, I stand by my statement. Al Jazeera serves a radical, anti-western agenda, and is controlled by the Imams. I would be very interested to see some reporting on this story from another source.
“Al Jazeera serves a radical, anti-western agenda, and is controlled by the Imams.”
That’s completely absurd. Al Jazeera is one of the most independent news organizations in the world.
ya know, just because you say so and all the talking heads on talk radio say so, doesn’t make it true. If you actually had an ounce of intelligence, you would research it for your self and find out that AJ English is no different from the other big news orgs, just that it’s centered in the mid east.
Sources (not just the cited articles on Wikipedia, since neither strongly support that statement)? While I have no problems with Al Jazeera English, I worked for the government from 97-99, focusing on the Middle East, and we absolutely hated them.
The world did change radically after 9/11, and you’re a fool if you believe other wise. I do understand that most Muslims are not terrorists, but may I remind you that the Koran instructs that lying to the “infidel” is an acceptable practice. The “western” version of Al Jaazeera is nothing more than a propaganda engine for those who hate us.
Al-Jazeera is run by a number of people of differing political and religious views. See Control Room for details.
Meanwhile, I would love to see you provide examples of Al-Jazeera’s Islamist bent. Trust me, I’ve lived in the Middle East, I’ve seen news channels with an Islamic bent.
Speaks Arabic.
Is an Arab.
Isn’t Muslim.
you want to see it? Google “Kindra Arneson” — Shes been fighting sores for quite awhile now, along with the entire team of Project Gulf Impact (hospitalized with chemical poisoning a few weeks back).
Just because MSM isn’t covering it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Look at ANY of the Plaquemines Parish (Louisiana) coverage… Christ you guys — This is why the people in the Gulf hate you right now. You’re ignoring them. Just like the dang holocaust – Americans just look away and put their heads in the oil layered sand?
For Shame, Crowd. For shame.
Godwin?
And I agree with you – I think that in the upcoming months or few years there will be a spike in “oil spill” related illnesses.
So that’s why I’ve had people living in that area tell me that they haven’t heard ANYTHING regarding any of this?
I live on the Gulf Coast, and this is the first I have heard of anything like this. Then again, I don’t get Al Jazeera on my rabbit ears TV. Maybe I’m just misinformed.
Its rather interesting that my entire family lives on the Gulf Coast and yet this is the first I’ve heard of it. You’d think that a rash of people with brown bodily discharges would be of interest in my weekly phone call to my mom and day anyway….
how do we know the oil or dispersant have anything to do with this!??!?
this reminds me when, about a week after the gusher started, turtles and dolphins began washing up on shore dead. every newspaper was so quick to say that there was no direct link!
fucking whores.
According to Wikipedia, the EPA ordered BP to stop using it, but BP kept on using it, even though they knew what symptoms it can cause.
And it was already banned in the UK, but BP didn’t even care. If it been banned there, it was banned for a reason.
So people should just send BP their medical bills.
The same Wiki article you linked explains the reason it was banned in the UK. It fails the “Rocky Shore” test. Apparently it makes the rocks too slick for marine life to exit the water. Not an issue in the Gulf Coast.
LOL, they cite Al Jazeera and YOU cite Wikipedia? It’s like the march of the unreliable news sources… I’d take Fox News any day over both of these put together.
It is a freaking disaster all around. I hope those affected sue. I have people I know living down there.
Not saying that people aren’t sick, but wasn’t it Al Jazeera that reported on the British importing killer badgers into Basra?
So Al Jazeera is now considered a news source? For domestic USA news? Huh.
Al-Jazeera? The Consumerist couldn’t find any U.S. news sources for this? Or even any news sources with some concept of grammar and good reporting?
My respect for this site just dropped a few notches.
Al Jazerra, come on….
Since everyone is simply questioning the source, here’s a site for your viewing pleasure: http://www.floridaoilspilllaw.com/
Long story short, the crude oil in and of itself would not cause such significant distress had it been left alone and skimmed off as was hoped for. But BP used a toxic dispersant to break up the oil, and when it did so, combined with the tropical heat in the GOM, it created the release of even more volitle chemicals within the crude. Corexit itself is a mixture of solvents, detergents, and petroleum byproduct, and it is not recommended for mass distribution over large bodies of water to contain oil spills. In other words, BP has turned the GOM into a giant Chemistry experiment.