Disenfranchised Citizen

Precisely...

A new study published online yesterday reports the Food and Drug Administration vastly underestimated the cancer risk from seafood when the agency allowed commercial fishing in the Gulf to resume.

Miriam Rotkin-Ellman and Gina Solomon of the Natural Resources Defense Council authored the study where they found that by using flawed assumptions and outdated risk assessment methods, the FDA allowed up to 10,000 times too much contamination and didn’t identify the risks to children and pregnant women posed by eating the contaminants.

Based on the study, the NRDC filed a petition asking the FDA to protect the public by setting a standard that limits PAH’s in seafood. PAH’s can cause cancer, birth defects, neurological delays and liver damage.

And, wouldn’t you know this ain’t the first time the government’s testing of seafood has been called into question.

Remember this one, last year?

“Citing what the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements. And they say that their own testing — examining fewer samples but more comprehensively — shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage.”

Or how about this one:

A survey of 547 coastal residents in the four Gulf states by the Natural Resources Defense Council found they had seafood consumption rates far higher than those being used by federal and state regulators to determine if contamination levels pose a risk to human health, “What we are saying is our survey identified large numbers of people who are eating more seafood than the FDA (federal Food and Drug Administration) assumes in its guidelines. My assumption is there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people who are not protected by the FDA guidelines.”

Which of course leads a reasonable person to wonder…who exactly is the FDA trying to protect?

Perhaps it’s British Petroleum…

By the FDA saying it’s safe to fish, the fishers who might have questioned the safety of the seafood and refused to bring potentially contaminated fish to market would seem to have left themselves open to having their claims denied by the GCCF, as Ken Feinberg points to the opened waters and says, you could have earned a living according to the FDA, you simply chose not to, and that is not BP’s fault.

Or maybe it’s the Obama Administration…

To most people paying attention to what was going on in the Gulf last summer, it seemed that what the Obama administration wanted more than anything else was for this whole oil spill thing to just go away, from the all the oil is gone pie chart to the US Coast Guard bending to the will of BP at every moment. Not a big leap to see the FDA pitching in to help, declaring the seafood safe, and attempting to move the problems of the Gulf a little further from the minds of most Americans.

Well, the FDA certainly isn’t trying to protect the public…

I mean, they either really suck at their job, or more likely, they have been putting the public second in importance for decades…sincerely, ever done a Google search on FDA scandal?

Yeah, it ain’t pretty…and the FDA?

They ain’t right…who knows who they were trying to protect…quite possible they don’t even know anymore, especially when Big Pharma didn’t have anything to do with the oil spill. Without the pharmaceutical industry calling the shots, or Monsanto…face it, the FDA is just lost.

Read the article and the report:

New Study Says FDA Underestimated Seafood Contamination Risk After BP Oil Spill

Have a nice day.

Personally, I'd love to meet him...

So, when the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement hit British Petroleum and their contractors with 15 “incidents of non-compliance,” BP expressed their hopes that now, finally, Transocean and Halliburton would admit responsibility, quit their complaining and put in the effort necessary to join BP in their current “safety first” environment.

“BP said it has taken steps to enhance safety and the sanctions show that its contractors also played a role in the spill, “We continue to encourage other parties, including Transocean and Halliburton, to acknowledge their responsibilities in the accident,” BP said in a statement.”

Because over the past 18 months, isn’t safety for the environment all British Petroleum has strived for? Of course, certainly…since the Macondo Well was plugged, BP has given nary a thought to profit and/or saving money. It is quite likely a moment of pure coincidence that such an admission of guilt by Transocean or Halliburton, as BP has asked for, would certainly bolster BP in their lawsuits against the two companies and/or avoid a declaration by the courts of “gross negligence.”

And I’m sure the savings involved in such possible events, why they never ever entered the mind of BP’s corporate personhood. Really, British Petroleum, in their new-found sense of responsibility is now all about safety, and only about safety, so it would make perfect sense for them to hope and pray that Halliburton and Transocean also make such strong safety goals a priority, you know, just like BP has and…wait, what?

Oil giant BP believes a worst-case oil spill nearly a mile below the Atlantic off Scotland would dwarf the U.S. Gulf oil spill, internal documents indicate. The contingency plans for a worst-case spill from a proposed exploratory well in wildlife-rich British waters off the Shetland Islands indicate a sea-floor oil gusher would spew 75,000 barrels of crude oil a day for 140 days before it could be capped — more than double the Gulf of Mexico spill’s 88-day average 53,000 barrels a day from April 20-July 15, 2010, the documents reviewed by Britain’s Independent newspaper indicated. The Gulf spill’s wellhead released about 4.9 million barrels before it was capped. The proposed North Uist exploratory well’s worst-case gusher would release 10.5 million barrels, the BP documents forecast.

Environmentalists say the well’s planned seabed location is in waters among the most wildlife-rich in all of Britain. Seabirds, including many rare species, are found in enormous concentrations, along with large numbers of whales, dolphins and seals and substantial fish stocks.

A BP spokesman told the newspaper the global oil and gas company was required by law to model the worst-case scenario, “But the reality is, the chances of a spill are very unlikely,” he said.

“Very unlikely,” he said.

Okay, that begs a question: what did BP consider the chances of the Deepwater Horizon blowing up to be?

Really likely? Kind of likely? Maybe kinda sorta once in a blue moon likely?

No, probably about as likely as Transocean and Halliburton are to suddenly acknowledge their responsibilities in the Macondo blowout. Or maybe just as likely as British Petroleum is to finally make all the Gulf Coast residents whole again…

No, I know, BP considered the possibility of the Deepwater Horizon exploding about as likely as BOEMRE again granting their company deep water drilling leases in the Gulf.

Wait…what?

U.S. Allows BP to Return to Gulf-Lease Bidding

Fuck.

Well, that isn’t encouraging at all.

Have a nice day.