After the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, rates of suicide, domestic violence and divorce soared in areas most affected by the disaster. Health leaders have been concerned the same is ahead for Gulf Coast communities where generations of families have earned their livings from local waters.
In late August, teams of local and federal experts conducted emergency surveys in Bayou La Batre, Coden and Dauphin Island to determine the spill’s impact on physical and mental health.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is due to release survey results in about two weeks, according to Dr. Bernard Eichold, who leads the Mobile County Health Department.
I do not.
I assume that there is some grain of truth to the fact that the pool was contaminated.
However,
There is no evidence that this was the only pool so contaminated. You made that assumption, despite having no data on any surrounding bodies of water.
Given that there was some contamination, we can deduce a couple of things:
1. The data is faked. In which case, we would expect nearby areas to have bodies of water free of the chemical, and no other cases of such rashes.
2. The data is real. There should easily be traces of contaminant in nearby areas.
Given that there is some data that there is contamination in nearby areas suggested by others becoming sick as reported in the OP, that would seem to indicate that your stated assumption, "only landed in this guy's pool", is factually in error.
I am sure, in any event, that more data will be gathered, and the truth/falsity of the claim will become more clear as a result.
The funny thing about this whole episode is how quickly you and WC are to pooh-pooh the possibility of pollution, and how badly you both applied critical thinking and logic to this.
You assumed, based on almost no evidence that the pool was always covered, and further assumed, based on no evidence that I could see, that his pool was the only place that was affected.
What evidence do you have that his pool was the only thing affected, Darrin?
Random, to my knowledge, the only other reported area of contamination was a bay, open to the sea. The question still remains about levels. How did so much of the marker become present without causing an area wide problem?
What directions did the wind blow? In the OP, the winds would not have carried it there. They were wrong about the winds, what else where they wrong about?
Robin Young [is] a 47-year-old director of guest services for a property management company in Orange Beach, Alabama…
Just a few days after BP’s oil made landfall along the Alabama Gulf Coast in June, Ms. Young’s symptoms started with “a fiery, burning sore throat,” she said. Then came the horrible, constant cough, followed by an achy feeling much like a severe flu virus — and a lethargy that kept her in bed for two weeks solid. Her memory started playing tricks on her, and her motor skills and even hand-to-eye coordination went south. …
Her new friends [she met while communicating with others who were sickened]… soon started a nonprofit group called Guardians of the Gulf [and] tried to find a local doctor to help them. After having no luck, they eventually found an out of state toxicologist and a doctor who knew enough about a new area of occupational and environmental health to order blood tests.
They found Dr. Michael R. Harbut, a clinical professor of Internal Medicine and director of the Environmental Cancer Program at Wayne State University’s Karmanos Cancer Ins ute, board certified in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. And they found Metametrix, a lab to test their blood.
What they found in the blood tests was a stew of toxic chemicals directly associated with oil and gas production and the chemical dispersant Corexit, including ethylbenzene, xylene and high levels of hexane, a hydrocarbon chiefly obtained by the refining of crude oil.
The long-term toxicity of hexane in humans is extensive peripheral nervous system failure. The initial symptoms are tingling and cramps in the arms and legs, followed by general muscular weakness. In severe cases, skeletal muscles atrophy and those exposed suffer a loss of coordination and vision problems, the very symptoms Ms. Young reported. …
Ms. Young and her friends are now being told they need a high resolution scan of their lungs, brain, liver and kidneys.
“They’ve also told us that in five to 10 years — they don’t have a time frame, they’re just guessing,” she said, “that we could come down with some godawful form of cancer.”Early on, [Robin Young, a 47-year-old director of guest services for a property management company in Orange Beach, Alabama]… invited a crew from Bio-Cascade, air-pollution specialists out of New Jersey and Boston, to come down and test the air. She put them up in a house right on the beach.
On the third day John Vallier of Bio-Cascade woke up with a sore throat. He put the air monitoring machine on the deck and within 15 minutes it showed 110 parts per million of Volatile Organic Compounds in the air. The crew quickly packed and said they would help from outside the vicinity of the bad air coming off the Gulf. It was striking how scared they were and how fast they got out of town, Ms. Young said, while EPA was downplaying the threat coming from its own air monitoring stations. …
See if you repugs can figure out what this means:
How bout this one:An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
One more:We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Are these the same plumes that have been eaten by the newly discovered bacterial waste, and are no longer considered oil?
Idiot.
Quotes of MLK do not belong here, but if you want one:
It really pisses me of that people quote the great man without understanding him. Today's blacks are full of hate that MLK would be ashamed of today.Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
1st: these quotes have value with any repug at any time anywhere
2nd: "Todays blacks" is an ignorant overgeneralization typical of your ilk
3rd: I dont think you can speak for him. Nor can your heros at fox network.
4th: If he's so great how do you dismiss his quotes so readily?
5th: Your a fraud
6th: All repugs need to read those and take them to heart
Once more, for emphasis
See if you repugs can figure out what this means:
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
How bout this one:
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
One more:
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I don't know of any "repugs" here, boutons III.
Yoni and DarrinS are completely repugnant IMHO. So reconsider that.
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-sp...needed_sc.htmlIn reopening about 5,130 square miles of Gulf waters to shrimping and fishing Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration proclaimed the shrimp and seafood safe. But [Gina Solomon, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council] said the data indicate that the agency only used data from 12 samples of shrimp, consisting of 73 individual shrimp, for its evaluation.
I would disagree. They may hold more favor to the republican party than I do, but they have criticized them often enough. They are not blind followers.
parker...
You afraid to link things?
More seafood testing needed, scientist says
I didn't see that before. Did you edit your other post?
From what I have seen, you have assumed that the person speaking in regards to the winds saying the word "easterly" used the word correctly.
When the person says "the winds blow from the gulf" that is in direct contravention to their statement of "easterly", you, being yourself, focused on the definition of the word "easterly", and assumed that when they said "the winds blow from the gulf" they were obviously wrong, because they used a word that means the opposite.
My understanding of winds on coastlines, is that they exibit the following patterns:
Blow out to sea at night when its cooler
Blow in from sea during day when its warmer
(double checked this, and it was correct:
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/weather/t...hers_wind.html )
Further it isn't really hard to find weather data for anywhere online these days:
http://www.wunderground.com/weathers...graphspan=week
That is the weather data for the week of May 19, 2010 for the city in question. You can thumb through the rest of the time period yourself, but my review shows that the above mentioned pattern generally holds, with the highest wind speeds being those coming in from the west, inland, during the warmest part of the day.
There were some days with moderate amounts of precipitation, and there is again, the possibility that some form of waterspout may have formed, sucking up water and launching it quite some distance, to come down again as rain.
Interestingly enough, when she reported that her flowers started looking "sickly" at the end of June, the week previous showed the highest levels of rainfall for the month.
It generally takes a few days for water to get from the roots of a plant to the top.
This would seem to indicate that there was indeed something in the rain.
You are the chemist, what is the level of water solubility and volatility (evaporative pressure) of the chemicals involved?
It is possible that a good amount of this chemical, sprayed on a large surface area of warm water would have evaporated to some degree, become airborne and been aborbed by low-level clouds?
The fact that nearby vegetation showed signs of unusual distress further evidences that some kind of contamination was present in areas outside the pool, although without specific testing one can't conclusively determine that the cause of the distress was the same as the contaminant in the pool. It is not an unreasonable assumption though, given proven levels of chemical in the pool.
More information on waterspouts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterspout
They are "common in coastal areas" and can form in relatively weak winds, providing an easy conduit for surface water to be sucked into forming clouds, as their lifecycle tends to be during the time in which rain clouds are forming.
Whee. Interesting lesson in atmospherics.
All in all, it seems fairly plausible to me that surfactant sprayed on to protect a coastline from observed globs of oil could be carried inland a ways.
It's so laughable, some of these things you and others nit-pick on. Once I gave my explanation, that should be good enough. It's not like i stuck to that point. I very quickly replied to a westerly wind scenario.
It's simple. You accused me of not reading the article because of an early reply, and it was after I also spoke of that level being impossible to be carried by the winds.
Do the math. 50.3 ppm... I don't care what way the winds blew. 50.3 ppm is impossible without intentionally putting that chemical in the pool.
Again, not to contaminate a swimming pool to 50.3 ppm. 5 ppm would be extreme. I could see 50.3 ppb!
As was mentioned in the thread previously the sample was gathered at the filter.
It was also suggested that samples gathered there would probably show much higher concentrations than if the sample was drawn directly from the water.
You are the chemist. Is this what would happen, i.e. samples drawn from the filter would show much higher concentrations of pollutants?
Yes, I read that about the filter. Question is, does the filter separate it or not? If the filter is trapping the substance making such readings higher, then any level in the pool is reduced. With a 50 ppm TWA rating for 2-Butoxyethanol, it seems that a dip in the pool is insignificant. If the water had 50.3 ppm in it rather than just the filter, then it would be acceptable to swim in that water for 8 hours. I could see sensitivity, but to the degree reported?
Do you ever look this stuff up?
Question.
Just how much do you suggest got in the pool, and how would that level cause problems for swimming for maybe an hour a day?
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