"The sole purpose in the Gulf for dispersants is to keep a cover-up going for BP to try to hide the volume of oil that has been released and save them hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars of fines. That’s the purpose of using the dispersants, not to protect the public health or environment. Quite the opposite." [ Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response. He’s been a leading critic of the decision to use Corexit.]
"Corexit is one of a number of dispersants, that are toxic, that are used to atomize the oil and force it down the water column so that it’s invisible to the eye. In this case, these dispersants were used in massive quantities, almost two million gallons so far, to hide the magnitude of the spill and save BP money. And the government—both EPA, NOAA, etc.—have been sock puppets for BP in this cover-up. Now, by hiding the amount of spill, BP is saving hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in fines, and so, from day one, there was tremendous economic incentive to use these dispersants to hide the magnitude of the gusher that’s been going on for almost three months.
Congressman Markey and Nadler, as well as Senator Mikulski, have
been heroes in this respect. Congressman Markey made the BP and
government put a camera down there to show the public the gusher. And
when they did that, experts saw that the amount of material, oil being
released, is orders of magnitudes greater than what BP and NOAA and EPA
were saying. And the cover-up started to evaporate.
But the use of dispersants has not. Consequently, we have people, wildlife—we have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally. And that’s what dispersants are supposed to do. EPA now is taking the position that they really don’t know how dangerous it is, even though if you read the label, it tells you how dangerous it is.
And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who
worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death
age is around fifty. It’s very dangerous, and it’s an economic—it’s an
economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public.
Now, the one thing that I did want to mention to you, Amy, that’s occurred in most investigations, back even in the Watergate days, people said, "follow the money." And that’s correct. In this case, you’ve got to follow the money.
Who saves money by using these toxic dispersants? Well, it’s BP. But then the next question—I’ve only seen one article that describes it—who owns BP? And I think when you look and see who owns BP, you find that it’s the majority ownership, a billion shares, is a company called BlackRock that was created, owned and run by a gentleman named Larry Fink.
And Vanity Fair just did recently
an article about Mr. Fink and his connections with Mr. Geithner, Mr.
Summers and others in the administration. So I think what’s needed, we
now know that there’s a cover-up. Dispersants are being used. Congress,
at least three Congress folks—Congressman Markey, Congressman Nadler and
Senator Mikulski—are on the case. And I think the media now has to
follow the money, just as they did in Watergate, and tell the American
people who’s getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the
Gulf.
1.8 million pounds of it have been dumped into the
Gulf. What’s in Corexit? Do we know? What is EPA allowed to know, and
what is the company allowed to keep private?
HUGH KAUFMAN: EPA has all the information on what’s in—the
ingredients are. The largest ingredient in Corexit is oil. But there
are other materials. And when the ingredients are mixed with oil, the
combination of Corexit or any dispersant and oil is more toxic than the
oil itself. But EPA has all that information. That’s a red herring issue
being raised, that we have to somehow know more information. When you
look at the label and you look at the toxicity sheets that come with it,
the public knows enough to know that it’s very dangerous. The National
Academy of Science has done work on it. Toxicologists from Exxon that
developed it have published on it. So, we know enough to know that it’s
very dangerous, and to say that we just have to know more about it is a
red herring issue. We know plenty. It’s very dangerous. And in fact,
Congressman Nadler and Senator Lautenberg are working on legislation to
ban it.
HUGH KAUFMAN: Well, not only do you have airplanes flying and dropping them on the Gulf region, like Agent Orange in Vietnam, but a large amount of it is being shot into the water column at 5,000 feet to disperse the oil as it gushers out. And so, you have spread, according to the Associated Press, over perhaps over 44,000 square miles, an oil and dispersant mix. And what’s happened is, that makes it impossible to skim the oil out of the water. One of the things that happened is they brought this big boat, Whale, in from Japan to get rid of the oil, and it didn’t work because the majority of the oil is spread throughout the water column over thousands of square miles in the Gulf. And so—and there’s been a lot of work to show the dispersants, which is true, make it more difficult to clean up the mess than if you didn’t use them. The sole purpose in the Gulf for dispersants is to keep a cover-up going for BP to try to hide the volume of oil that has been released and save them hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars of fines. That’s the purpose of using the dispersants, not to protect the public health or environment. Quite the opposite. "
from Amy Goodman radio interview on DEMOCRACY NOW
