A career whistleblower says the agency knows more than it's letting on about the risks of the oil-spill clean-up chemicals.

— By Kate Sheppard

An Environmental Protection Agency staff member is accusing his employer of being coy when it comes to dispersant use in the Gulf. Career whistleblower Hugh Kaufman says EPA officials know that the chemicals present a threat to public health and the Gulf ecosystem and should be banned; they just don't want to say so.

Kaufman, a senior policy analyst in the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, alleges that agency administrator Lisa Jackson sidestepped the issue last week in her answers to questions about whether the agency has the authority to call off use of dispersants in the Gulf. The agency, he says, is deliberately downplaying the threat—and its own role in regulating the chemicals—to protect itself from liability and keep the public from getting too alarmed.

This is far from the first time Kaufman has raised concerns about the EPA's handling of a major national disaster. In fact, he has been blowing whistles on the EPA since he began working there in 1971, just a few months after it was founded. He criticized the Carter administration's handling of hazardous waste issues, including the infamous Love Canal example in the late 1970s and is credited with spurring the formation of the Superfund program. In 1982 he went after the Reagan administration for not enforcing laws on hazardous waste and toxic chemicals as well, and helped send deputy EPA administrator Rita Lavelle to jail for perjury in 1983. The 2002 book Whistleblowing includes an entire section on Kaufman.

Most recently, Kaufman exposed the agency's efforts to hide information about health risksfrom air pollution for responders at the World Trade Center site after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At that time, he was the chief investigator in the office of the EPA ombudsman—but soon after he blew the whistle, then-EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman decided to eliminate the ombudsman's office altogether, a move Kaufman says was meant to silence his complaints. He's still at the agency, but has been shifted away from his watchdog role.

"What's going on in the Gulf is the same cover up that was going with the 9/11 environmental issue," said Kaufman. "The Bush White House ordered EPA to lie about the environmental and public health situation at the World Trade Center because of economic ramifications. So they did."

"I've been through this before," he continued. "It was the same kind of crap."

It's hard to say whether anyone is taking Kaufman seriously this time around. He's compiled a lengthy list of email contacts, from reporters to NGO leaders and green celebrities like Ed Begley, Jr., all of whom he sends almost daily emails on the subject. Since his September 11 whistleblowing, he's basically been forced into bureaucratic exile within the agency, pushing papers rather than keeping watch over the agency's work, like he could in his former role. He asserts that they can't fire him at this point; it would only make the agency look worse.

"He's an activist working inside of the agency," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a group that represents whistleblowers in federal agencies. The group is part of the co-counsel for Kaufman's ongoing lawsuit regarding the elimination of the ombudsman's office.

But Kaufman is not alone in his concern. According to Ruch, at least 10 other EPA staffers, including several toxicologists, have come to PEER to raise concerns about dispersants and other health problems in the Gulf, claiming that their superiors at the agency are not doing due diligence when it comes to dispersants. "[EPA] appears to be making decisions at the behest of BP and not exercising much, if any, independent judgment," says Ruch.

To wit: When Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) asked Lisa Jackson whether the EPA could force BP to stop using the toxic chemicals on the spill at last Thursday's hearing, Jackson first said she didn’t have the authority to weigh in: "I would not know," she said. "I'm not an attorney." Jackson assured Mikulski that the EPA's lawyers would get back to her office with the specifics on their authority. In the past, however, Jackson and the EPA have insisted that they do have that control—they gave BP the go-ahead to use dispersants underwater and have issued guidelines on how much of the chemicals the company is supposed to be using.

Asked to clarify Jackson's remarks, the EPA explained in a statement Monday that the use of dispersants on the surface of the Gulf is pre-approved in the Area Contingency Plan, the response plan that each region of the country is required to draft under the 1990 Oil Pollution Act in preparation for a potential spill. The EPA is only charged with greenlighting specific brands of dispersant for use in the event of a spill. The statement also said that the EPA only controls dispersant use underwater, while the federal on-scene coordinator—a representative from the Coast Guard—controls surface spraying.

The EPA also said that it reserves the right to discontinue use of a dispersant if it deems the substance too hazardous. But so far, the agency has been reluctant to crack down on the chemicals. Citing concerns about Corexit, BP's dispersant of choice, the agency told BP to find an alternative almost two months ago. When the company chose to ignore that directive, instead of forcing the issue, the EPA pledged to do its own tests on both Corexit and the alternatives, and instead told BP to scale back dispersant use. BP continued to use a large volume of dispersants in the ensuing weeks, with the Coast Guard regularly granting permission to use more than the directive called for. At this point, the EPA's tests are essentially worthless for this particular oil spill, as BP has already dumped 1.84 million gallons of Corexit into the Gulf.

Jackson says that her agency is concerned about the dispersants, but it's not going to force BP to stop using the chemicals because the agency believes they are still safer than the oil itself. "The number one enemy is the oil," Jackson said a May 24 press conference. Yet she has said repeatedly that the EPA didn’t know enough about the long-term impacts of the chemicals to ban them. "With the use of dispersants, we are faced with environmental trade-offs," Jackson told the panel last week. "The long term effects on aquatic life are largely unknown."

But Kaufman says you can't have it both ways—either you know it's safe enough to say it's better than the oil, or you don't know enough. "They're admitting they have the evidence to make a balancing test," says Kaufman. "If they have the evidence, then why testify they don't? Which way is it?" He says there is more than enough evidence, between a 2005 National Academy of Sciences study and the warnings that come with the dispersant productsto show that they're problematic.

A career whistleblower says the agency knows more than it's letting on about the risks of the oil-spill clean-up chemicals.

— By Kate Sheppard

An Environmental Protection Agency staff member is accusing his employer of being coy when it comes to dispersant use in the Gulf. Career whistleblower Hugh Kaufman says EPA officials know that the chemicals present a threat to public health and the Gulf ecosystem and should be banned; they just don't want to say so.

Kaufman, a senior policy analyst in the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, alleges that agency administrator Lisa Jackson sidestepped the issue last week in her answers to questions about whether the agency has the authority to call off use of dispersants in the Gulf. The agency, he says, is deliberately downplaying the threat—and its own role in regulating the chemicals—to protect itself from liability and keep the public from getting too alarmed.

This is far from the first time Kaufman has raised concerns about the EPA's handling of a major national disaster. In fact, he has been blowing whistles on the EPA since he began working there in 1971, just a few months after it was founded. He criticized the Carter administration's handling of hazardous waste issues, including the infamous Love Canal example in the late 1970s and is credited with spurring the formation of the Superfund program. In 1982 he went after the Reagan administration for not enforcing laws on hazardous waste and toxic chemicals as well, and helped send deputy EPA administrator Rita Lavelle to jail for perjury in 1983. The 2002 book Whistleblowing includes an entire section on Kaufman.

Most recently, Kaufman exposed the agency's efforts to hide information about health risksfrom air pollution for responders at the World Trade Center site after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At that time, he was the chief investigator in the office of the EPA ombudsman—but soon after he blew the whistle, then-EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman decided to eliminate the ombudsman's office altogether, a move Kaufman says was meant to silence his complaints. He's still at the agency, but has been shifted away from his watchdog role.

"What's going on in the Gulf is the same cover up that was going with the 9/11 environmental issue," said Kaufman. "The Bush White House ordered EPA to lie about the environmental and public health situation at the World Trade Center because of economic ramifications. So they did."

"I've been through this before," he continued. "It was the same kind of crap."

It's hard to say whether anyone is taking Kaufman seriously this time around. He's compiled a lengthy list of email contacts, from reporters to NGO leaders and green celebrities like Ed Begley, Jr., all of whom he sends almost daily emails on the subject. Since his September 11 whistleblowing, he's basically been forced into bureaucratic exile within the agency, pushing papers rather than keeping watch over the agency's work, like he could in his former role. He asserts that they can't fire him at this point; it would only make the agency look worse.

"He's an activist working inside of the agency," said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a group that represents whistleblowers in federal agencies. The group is part of the co-counsel for Kaufman's ongoing lawsuit regarding the elimination of the ombudsman's office.

But Kaufman is not alone in his concern. According to Ruch, at least 10 other EPA staffers, including several toxicologists, have come to PEER to raise concerns about dispersants and other health problems in the Gulf, claiming that their superiors at the agency are not doing due diligence when it comes to dispersants. "[EPA] appears to be making decisions at the behest of BP and not exercising much, if any, independent judgment," says Ruch.

To wit: When Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) asked Lisa Jackson whether the EPA could force BP to stop using the toxic chemicals on the spill at last Thursday's hearing, Jackson first said she didn’t have the authority to weigh in: "I would not know," she said. "I'm not an attorney." Jackson assured Mikulski that the EPA's lawyers would get back to her office with the specifics on their authority. In the past, however, Jackson and the EPA have insisted that they do have that control—they gave BP the go-ahead to use dispersants underwater and have issued guidelines on how much of the chemicals the company is supposed to be using.

Asked to clarify Jackson's remarks, the EPA explained in a statement Monday that the use of dispersants on the surface of the Gulf is pre-approved in the Area Contingency Plan, the response plan that each region of the country is required to draft under the 1990 Oil Pollution Act in preparation for a potential spill. The EPA is only charged with greenlighting specific brands of dispersant for use in the event of a spill. The statement also said that the EPA only controls dispersant use underwater, while the federal on-scene coordinator—a representative from the Coast Guard—controls surface spraying.

The EPA also said that it reserves the right to discontinue use of a dispersant if it deems the substance too hazardous. But so far, the agency has been reluctant to crack down on the chemicals. Citing concerns about Corexit, BP's dispersant of choice, the agency told BP to find an alternative almost two months ago. When the company chose to ignore that directive, instead of forcing the issue, the EPA pledged to do its own tests on both Corexit and the alternatives, and instead told BP to scale back dispersant use. BP continued to use a large volume of dispersants in the ensuing weeks, with the Coast Guard regularly granting permission to use more than the directive called for. At this point, the EPA's tests are essentially worthless for this particular oil spill, as BP has already dumped 1.84 million gallons of Corexit into the Gulf.

Jackson says that her agency is concerned about the dispersants, but it's not going to force BP to stop using the chemicals because the agency believes they are still safer than the oil itself. "The number one enemy is the oil," Jackson said a May 24 press conference. Yet she has said repeatedly that the EPA didn’t know enough about the long-term impacts of the chemicals to ban them. "With the use of dispersants, we are faced with environmental trade-offs," Jackson told the panel last week. "The long term effects on aquatic life are largely unknown."

But Kaufman says you can't have it both ways—either you know it's safe enough to say it's better than the oil, or you don't know enough. "They're admitting they have the evidence to make a balancing test," says Kaufman. "If they have the evidence, then why testify they don't? Which way is it?" He says there is more than enough evidence, between a 2005 National Academy of Sciences study and the warnings that come with the dispersant productsto show that they're problematic.

For the last few weeks, BP has been offering signing bonuses and lucrative pay to prominent scientists from public universities around the Gulf Coast to aid its defense against spill litigation.

BP PLC attempted to hire the entire marine sciences department at one Alabama university, according to scientists involved in discussions with the company's lawyers. The university declined because of confidentiality restrictions that the company sought on any research.

The Press-Register obtained a copy of a contract offered to scientists by BP. It prohibits the scientists from publishing their research, sharing it with other scientists or speaking about the data that they collect for at least the next three years.

"We told them there was no way we would agree to any kind of restrictions on the data we collect. It was pretty clear we wouldn't be hearing from them again after that," said Bob Shipp, head of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama. "We didn't like the perception of the university representing BP in any fashion."

BP officials declined to answer the newspaper's questions about the matter. Among the questions: how many scientists and universities have been approached, how many are under contract, how much will they be paid, and why the company imposed confidentiality restrictions on scientific data gathered on its behalf.

Shipp said he can't prohibit scientists in his department from signing on with BP because, like most universities, the staff is allowed to do outside consultation for up to eight hours a week.

More than one scientist interviewed by the Press-Register described being offered $250 an hour through BP lawyers. At eight hours a week, that amounts to $104,000 a year.

Scientists from Louisiana State University, University of Southern Mississippi and Texas A&M have reportedly accepted, according to academic officials. Scientists who study marine invertebrates, plankton, marsh environments, oceanography, sharks and other topics have been solicited.

The contract makes it clear that BP is seeking to add scientists to the legal team that will fight the Natural Resources Damage Assessment lawsuit that the federal government will bring as a result of the Gulf oil spill.

The government also filed a NRDA suit after the Exxon Valdez spill.

In developing its case, the government will draw on the large amount of scientific research conducted by academic institutions along the Gulf. Many scientists being pursued by BP serve at those institutions.

Robert Wiygul, an Ocean Springs lawyer who specializes in environmental law, said that he sees ethical questions regarding the use of publicly owned laboratories and research vessels to conduct confidential work on behalf of a private company.

Also, university officials who spoke with the newspaper expressed concern about the potential loss of federal research money tied to professors working for BP.

With its payments, BP buys more than the scientists' services, according to Wiygul. It also buys silence, he said, thanks to confidentiality clauses in the contracts.

View full size(File)"It makes me feel like they were more interested in making sure we couldn't testify against them than in having us testify for them," said George Crozier, head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, who was approached by BP.

"It makes me feel like they were more interested in making sure we couldn't testify against them than in having us testify for them," said George Crozier, head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, who was approached by BP.

Richard Shaw, associate dean of LSU's School of the Coast and Environment, said that the BP contracts are already hindering the scientific community's ability to monitor the affects of the Gulf spill.

"The first order of business at the research meetings is to get all the disclosures out. Who has a personal connection to BP? We have to know how to deal with that person," Shaw said. "People are signing on with BP because the government funding to the universities has been so limited. It's a sad state of affairs."

Wiygul, who examined the BP contract for the Press-Register, described it as "exceptionally one-sided."

"This is not an agreement to do research for BP," Wiygul said. "This is an agreement to join BP's legal team. You agree to communicate with BP through their attorneys and to take orders from their attorneys.

"The purpose is to maintain any information or data that goes back and forth as privileged."

The contract requires scientists to agree to withhold data even in the face of a court order if BP decides to fight such an order. It stipulates that scientists will be paid only for research approved in writing by BP.

The contracts have the added impact of limiting the number of scientists who're able to with federal agencies. "Let's say BP hired you because of your work with fish. The contract says you can't do any work for the government or anyone else that involves your work with BP. Now you are a fish scientist who can't study fish," Wiygul said.

A scientist who spoke to the Press-Register on condition of anonymity because he feared harming relationships with colleagues and government officials said he rejected a BP contract offer and was subsequently approached by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with a research grant offer.

He said the first question the federal agency asked was, "'is there a conflict of interest,' meaning, 'are you under contract with BP?'"

Other scientists told the newspaper that colleagues who signed on with BP have since been informed by federal officials that they will lose government funding for ongoing research efforts unrelated to the spill.

Courtesy of Washington’s Blog

As I have previously noted, Corexit is toxic, is less effective than other dispersants, and is actually the damage caused by the oil spill.

Now, two toxicologists are saying that Corexit is much more harmful to human health and marine life than we’ve been told.

Specifically Gulf toxicologist Dr. Susan Shaw - Founder and Director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute - dove into the oil spill to examine the chemicals present.

Dr. Shaw told CNN:

If I can tell you what happens — because I was in the oil — to people…

Shrimpers throwing their nets into water… [then] water from the nets splashed on his skin. …

[He experienced a] headache that lasted 3 weeks… heart palpitations… muscle spasms…bleeding from the rectum…

And that’s what that Corexit does, it ruptures red blood cells, causes internal bleeding, and liver and kidney damage. …

This stuff is so toxic combined… not the oil or dispersants alone. …

Very, very toxic and goes right through skin.

***

The reason this is so toxic is because of these solvents [from dispersant] that penetrate the skin of anything that’s going through the dispersed oil takes the oil into the cells —takes the oil into the organs… and this stuff is toxic to every organ system in the body. …

Read the rest...

For several days, bloggers and journalists have been passing around a news story about how the BP oil disaster will unleash a "giant methane bubble" and initiate a mass extinction. Yes, it's a myth. And we've busted it.

In this article, called "Doomsday: How BP Gulf disaster may have triggered a 'world-killing' event," a guy named Terrence Aym takes some information he got from a "Mega Disasters" TV special on undersea methane bubbles and mixes it with comments about how there are "giant rifts" beneath the sea and an "information blackout." He proposes that a "twenty mile methane bubble" dislodged by the BP oil disaster will erupt from the ocean floor, causing tidal waves and giant explosions. The sad part about all this is that news organizations and blogs took the story seriously.

While it's true that there are methane bubbles (and methane ice) beneath the ocean floor, they are not about to erupt from Gulf and destroy all life on Earth. This morning I spoke with two Earth scientists, Dave Valentine of UC Santa Barbara and Chris Reddy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, who study methane and oil seeps from the sea floor. Valentine has just been out to the Gulf to study the methane levels there, and told io9:

During our recent cruise to the Gulf we observed significantly elevated levels of methane at water depth greater than 2500 feet, in the vicinity of the Deepwater Horizon spill site. While the total quantity of methane and other hydrocarbons is enough to cause problems with the regional ecosystem, there is no plausible scenario by which this event alone will cause global-scale extinctions.

So yes, there is a methane seep. No, it will not cause tidal waves or explode.

Another fishy fact in the methane bubble doomsday story is Aym's description of how methane bubbles are what caused the End Permian mass extinction event 250 million years ago - a mass extinction that I wrote about recently, here. Many scientists do believe that atmospheric changes and ocean anoxia (de-oxygenization) were to blame for that extinction - but even Gregory Ryskin, the scientist whose highly speculative work is cited in the article, doesn't try to claim this as the sole cause, nor does he believe that one bubble of methane could bring down the biosphere instantly. The End Permian extinction took millennia to happen.

So the BP oil spill isn't going to end the world - it's just going to kill a lot of ocean life. And already-existing methane seeps may be doing slow, deadly damage to our climate. All this makes it even more obvious that we need to invest in alternate forms of energy. But who wants to hear difficult, complicated pieces of information, when we could just be screaming about doomsday?

If you'd like to learn more about how methane bubbles really work, here are a few scientific articles:

Dissolved methane distributions and air-sea flux in the plume of a massive seep field, Coal Oil Point, California

Gulf Coast residents attempting to flee today's lethal "chemical rape" and further non-consensual human experimentation before forced evacuations begin need compassionate Americans' help. A group of women have launched an aid program that connects the new American refugees with helping hands of Individuals, businesses and charities across the nation.

The new non-government organization, Help the Gulf People!, has launched its website, a portal to match incoming 'refugee' needs with incoming resources.

On June 25, Ashiya Austin created a Facebook Group in hopes of assisting people needing to leave the Gulf Coast due to thelethal toxic chemical crisis, the "BP Gulf War Syndrome." Now, Louann Edwards of Louisiana, Faith Dyson, Jhenya Lovering and Angelique Collins have joined forces with Austin to help fill the widening gap of survival needs that people fleeing the Deep South have.

Emergency planners have called the transformed Gulf Region, "a deadly 'toxic soup' of oil," and the air, with Corexit 9500 oil dispersants, "a dangerous mixture" of gases."

Most people find that US military and private army supported companies are using lethal chemicals to gas Americans too horrid to face. They cannot plan to leave. These are among reasons that Intel Hub Radio's Shepard Ambellas interviewed Matt Smith of Project Gulf Impact and Dr. Mark Sircus of IMVAon July 7.

Smith, a West Coast resident, established Project Gulf Impact due to U.S. government/media suppression of what is actually happening in the Gulf Coast area and to the people there since the explosion. He and his team of filmmakers and reporters are traveling the region, investigating and reporting through alternative media sources with a conviction that "the success in one's life is not measured by status achieved, but by the impact on the lives of others."

Project Gulf Impact has been documenting economic, environmental, and human health impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil explosion. It is providing a voice for the voiceless residents of the Gulf and capture the social, political, and environmental climate surrounding one of the greatest environmental disasters of our time.

Smith explained that it is "really sad" to see people's reaction to the crisis and compared it to the grief of death. People go through stages after a loved one dies, the first of which is denial.

"These people are in denial."

According to Smith, government officials from various departments based along the Gulf Coast, all requiring anonymity due to suppression and subsequent persecution if they are named, have stated that forced evacuations will occur. This concurs with insider information Wayne Madsen provided related to the plans for all Gulf States to be evacuated, a matter withheld from the public in strictest national security secrecy mode.

Smith said that numerous government workers, doctors, scientists and other agency workers from "all over the spectrum" have said that they hear that there will be forced evacuations. This is part of the Gulf military operation toward "Full Spectrum Dominance." (See: Gassed in the Gulf: Toward Full Spectrum Dominance, Dupre, Examiner, June 15, 2010)

"The problem these people are talking about is the the evacuation planned is not friendly. It is forced evacuation," Smith stated. "They are going to do a 4-5 state evacuation with FEMA in control."

The UN buses in various locations along the Gulf Coast are worrying Smith according to his report.

"Corexit is lethal. It is killing you if you’re living here. Its like being in a giant gas chamber. About 10% is landing on the oil and the rest is in the air."

Smith spoke about oil alone being toxic and causing serious illnesses and the The 2010 Hurricane Season forecast to be highly active and strong to the point New Orleans WWL urged residents to make evacuation plans 2 months ago, saying, "Get a game plan now."

"Water is up to 10 degrees hotter than usual, said Smith who believes Tropical Storm Bonnie could be what catapults chaos and misery of forced evacuations to a population unprepared mentally and physically.

"There is acid rain, even as far up as North Carolina... There are pictures of yards burned, plants with holes in them, people with rashes, skin burning from being out in the rain. I was out for 1 minute in the rain and my hands were sticky."

Smith attributes the human and agricultural destruction to Corexit in rain. He reminded the listener about the lethal poison in rain seeping into the water table and drinking water.

Asked about food crops poisoned the same way, he said, "This is a worry. People need to be thinking about that."

Dr. Mark Sircus (Ac., OMD), director of the International Medical Veritas Association (IMVA)www.imva.info/, stated in the IntelHub Interview on July 7, "Nobody’s telling people what to do.”

Noted for his intellectual honesty about vaccines and author of the books, Cry of the Heart and Terror of Paediatric Medicine, Sircus listed toxic chemical poisoning preventions Gulf Coast residents need to be using now such as baking soda, activated charcoal, clay tablets and magnesium, all easily available and easy to learn to use after poisoned.

It takes months to eliminate poisons from the body, even after a person may feel better from the initial flu-like symptoms according to Sircus who emphasized: "After Chernobyl, the Russian government was airlifting poison remedies to the people. But not a word of airlifting to the Gulf Coast people."

"People are playing on the beach in Corexit. People are waiting for Big Brother to tell them to go. They will wait for the Commander in Chief to tell them to go.