Originally posted by ALOSTSOUL
reply to post by Skewed

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Well i'm not sure, theres no mention of the patients contracting it via food/water but I'm guessing a lot of the patients are part of the "Clean up" crews, who came into contact with the oil.

ALS

....and people who went swimming in the Gulf (I would not set foot in that water!)

Originally posted by Skewed
reply to post by Amaterasu

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Ahh, I had never really known what corexit actually was.

You know, over millions of years I cannot help but to think that oil spills have naturally occurred before. Such as earthquakes rupturing oil cavities and releasing crude. It seems nature has or would have a mechanism for cleaning that up. It may take many years to do so, but nature is not on any time schedule, it is mainly an inconvenience to humans.

I do not see why crude oil is as bad for the environment as it is made out to be. After all, it is simply decayed life. I ask, how would nature handle this? If we could find that answer we could actually do some good rather than making it worse.

The proprietary composition is not public, but the manufacturer's own safety data sheet on Corexit EC9527A says the main components are 2-butoxyethanol and a proprietary organic sulfonate with a small concentration of propylene glycol.

The relative toxicity of Corexit and other dispersants are difficult to determine due to a scarcity of scientific data.[4] The manufacturer's safety data sheet states "No toxicity studies have been conducted on this product,"

More than a year after a private company operating in public waters retched 170 million gallons of crude and 2 million gallons of toxic dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico, creating one of the world's largest environmental catastrophes, we still lack thorough and reliable statistics on the BP oil disaster's impact on the health of residents. Along with Stephen Bradberry, who is the executive director of the New Orleans-based Alliance Institute and the recipient of the 2005 RFK Human Rights Award, I recently joined a delegation traveling across the Gulf Coast region, speaking with fishermen, oystermen, shrimpers, restaurant workers and neighbors about the illnesses they have suffered in the wake of this calamity. I couldn't help but think of the trip that my father, Robert Kennedy, made to the Mississippi Delta in 1967. He was horrified by the poverty, the children whose bellies were "swollen with hunger." He believed we had a duty, as a nation, to relieve their suffering and soothe their pain. Today, the children and grandchildren of those very same families continue to suffer from systemic governmental neglect, the debilitating heritage of communities marginalized by skin color, religion, education level, income or access to power. It is long past time for federal action. In Biloxi, Miss., a fisherman named Kwan told us he was on a cleanup crew for BP, and he and his fellow fishermen have had rashes across their bodies, which itch until they bleed, ever since. In that city, the health care facility is so over-booked, it takes up to three months for a doctor's appointment.

Last year, President Obama pledged that Gulf residents would be "made whole." To honor that pledge, Congress must ensure that health care is adequate, affordable, proximate and available; that health care workers are trained to diagnose, track and treat toxic poisoning; and that the people of the Gulf are treated with respect, no matter what their background.

Since the spill, fishermen have been reporting unusual problems with their catches: Lesions on shrimp, crabs with holes in their shells, red snapper with rotting fins. Meanwhile, dead dolphins have been washing up on Gulf beaches in unprecedented numbers, leading the federal government to declare an “unusual mortality event.”