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Title: Gulf spill looks big, but looks are deceiving
Source:
Alaska Dispatch
URL Source: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/voice ... ks-big-but-looks-are-deceiving
Published: May 10, 2010
Author: Craig Medred
Post Date: 2010-05-10 15:51:31 by Ibluafartsky
Keywords: oil, food, chain
Views: 611
Comments: 1
Gulf spill looks big, but looks are deceiving Craig Medred | May 8, 2010 NEW ORLEANS -- Micro-dosing is a technique whereby professional endurance athletes -- Tour de France cyclists, Olympic marathoners and the like -- try to avoid getting caught using drugs, and it has something to tell us about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The radio airwaves here on the edge of the Louisiana bayous reverberate every day now with concerns about "the oil'' getting in "the food chain.'' The oil is, of course, the crude the Deepwater accident is still gushing all over the Gulf of Mexico 50 miles off the southern Gulf Coast. By now the uncapped geyser left spewing 5,000-feet deep on the seabed after the explosion and fire that sank the Deepwater, killing 11, has sent upward of 2 million to 3 million gallons of crude oil to blacken the surface of the ocean. The "food chain" is, of course, that complex web of life which we sit atop. More specifically, in this particular case, it is the oil-eating bacteria that are eaten by dinoflagellates that are eaten by copepods that eaten by euphausids that are eaten by shrimp, which are to people in Louisiana what salmon are to people in Alaska. Nothing seems to freak out a Cajun more than the idea that oil might get in his'n or her'n shrimp, and because of that all that oil floating in the Gulf has a lot of people scared because it looks bad. That and because the media, which no one in this country seems to believe anymore unless a disaster strikes, keeps saying it is bad. It is bad, too. There is going to be environmental fallout from this mega-dosing event for decades, but as far as the food chain is concerned, it is really nothing. The Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection in 1993 took a shot at estimating the volume of hydrocarbons going into the marine food chain on an annual basis, and the number they came up with makes the Horizon spill look insignificant. The total? 2.3 million tons or about 16.1 million barrels or, to finally get it into numbers comparable to those here, 676 million gallons per year. That's right, 676 million gallons per year. Where does it come from? Well, sad to say, most of it comes from you and me. The GESAMP estimated that 50 percent of the various oil derivatives, or about 338 million gallons per year, come in small part from the refineries that produce the gas people put in their cars and the oil they use to heat their homes, and in large part from urban runoff. This would be the gas you spill when refilling at the service stations. The oil that leaks out of your car. The old fuel your irresponsible neighbor dumps in his driveway. The hydrocarbons that come out of the noisy, inefficient, two-cycle grass blower you use because you are too lazy to rake. Those hydrocarbons settle to the ground to be washed away and become runoff pollution. Alaskans should be somewhat familiar with this problem. There was such a volume of hydrocarbons from old-fashioned two-cycle engines polluting the Kenai River that the engines were banned. The only engines now legal on the Kenai are high-tech, cleaner burning two-cycles and four-cycles. The Kenai, it should be noted, also continues to collect a high volume of hydrocarbon runoff from traffic, but cars have not been banned near the watershed. Nor have they been banned here in Louisiana or nearby Mississippi or Alabama or Florida where the volume of traffic makes the Sterling Highway in Kenai look like a one-lane country road. Same for the waters along the coast where the small boat traffic not only makes the busiest day on the Kenai River look like nothing, but where there is a constantly shifting flotilla of tankers and cargo ships scuttling back and forth to several major seaports, spilling and dumping oil. Not to mention the fishing boats. More than one commercial fisherman, in fact, when asked "Have you smelled any oil?'' answered something to the effect of, "I thought I did, but it could just have been someone pumping their bilges.'' This is the hydrocarbon micro-dosing of the food chain that takes place around the world on a daily basis. It's hard to tell if anyone notices, harder still to tell if anyone cares. Certainly when you go to a gas station in Alaska, you don't see people going to great lengths to not only fuel their cars carefully while gassing up, but to keep that little seal up tight against the tank so no hydrocarbons escape into the air. The GESAMP estimated those hydrocarbons escaping into the air, by the way, contribute about 88 million gallons of pollution to the marine food chain each year in the form of atmospheric fallout. That's eight Exxon Valdez tanker spills. So between runoff and air pollution, the inhabitants of the globe are each year micro-dosing the marine food chain with about 526 million gallons of oil or about 48 Exxon Valdez oil spills. And that's every year. Now, where does the rest of the oil that gets into the marine food chain come from? Well, the GESAMP estimated about 162 million gallons comes from oil transport and shipping, both in the form of tanker accidents and "operational discharges'' (i.e.the pumping of bilges and ballast water). The south Gulf Coast has a lot of tanker traffic. There are no numbers available on how much of that oil goes into the Gulf every year, but given the size of the Deepwater spill at this moment -- and cross your fingers BP gets it capped soon -- there is likely to have been as much or more oil put into the Gulf in the past decade in this way than has now been spilled. But we've still got some oil to account for here. So let's note where the rest comes from. There are, the GESAMP concluded, about 74 million gallons per year from natural seeps, of which the Gulf has many, and about 14 million gallons per year from "offshore production discharges.'' That would be oil from offshore oil platforms of which there are many in the Gulf. It is the main area for offshore oil production in this country. Exactly how much oil from offshore production in the Gulf has been dumped into the food chain over the past decades is not known, nor is the contribution to the Gulf from natural seeps or shipping or runoff or, for that matter, shrimp-boat captains pumping their bilges. Suffice to say, this micro-dosing of the food chain has been significant, and hardly anyone has noticed. But now suddenly because of the oil that can be seen versus the oil that is invisible, all sorts of people are freaking out about the possible dope in the food chain. The Chicken Littles seem to be on the airwaves almost every minute ranting, "It's going to get in the food chain; it's going to get in the food chain; it's going to get in the food chain.'' Fact is it's already in the food chain. The good news is that aside from so-called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, there really isn't anything in oil that's known to bioaccumulate, and bioaccumulation is the big concern for higher-order predators like you and me. We don't want to be eating shrimp if the shrimp, instead of passing any oil byproducts through their systems, store those products and keep storing them until they become little shrimp death pills. That's what bioaccumulation does. There shouldn't be much concern about it here. There really aren't enough PAHs in the Deepwater crude to -- at this point -- contaminate the food chain. If you do want to worry about PAHs, however, here are some good places to start: your cigar or cigarette, your campfire, or -- believe it or not - your incense. This is because along with being a component of hydrocarbons, PAHs are also formed by the incomplete combustion of any carbon-containing fuels: wood, coal, incense, seal oil, candlefish, you name it. Now, with all of that said, there might be something associated with this oil spill more dangerous than chemicals: stress. A lot of people are stressed out over the Deepwater Horizon, and there's a growing body of medical research that says stress is deadly. A study out just this week concluded that women who reported that pressure at work was a bit too high were 25 percent more likely to suffer from heart disease than those who said their stress levels at work were manageable. The risk jumped to almost 50 percent in those who said the pressures were much too high, according to Yrsa Andersen Hundrup of Glostrup University Hospital in Denmark. These conclusions reported in Health Day News and elsewhere didn't get nearly the attention of the Deepwater oil spill. The everyday things that can kill you are of far less interest to the media than the unusual things that might, kinda, could, maybe, possibly hurt you. It's probably OK for everyone to worry about the Deepwater spill, but it would be a lot more productive for society in general if everyone worried on a daily basis about how to keep everyday oil out of the environment. There is a long list of things you can do -- drive less, be careful refueling, properly dispose of old and gasoline, turn the heat down in your house. But what American would want to go to the trouble? Down here, people aren't even worried enough about energy to ease off on the air conditioning. Some of the buildings you enter are so cold you almost need a jacket. The fuel to provide the electricity to power the air conditioners has to come from somewhere. Fifty percent of the energy for electricity here in Louisiana comes from natural gas. Much of that natural gas is byproduct of drilling for oil along the Louisiana coast. That drilling was never a problem until now. Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
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Exactly! Envirofreaks are the world's biggest fookin HYPOCRITES! Refrain from using all petroleum based products, turn in your vehicles and disconnect from the power grid now, fookin envirofreaks! Sneakypete, have you ever been married? Said things you later regretted?
There is a long list of things you can do -- drive less, be careful refueling, properly dispose of old and gasoline, turn the heat down in your house. But what American would want to go to the trouble?
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