North America facing years of toxic rain from poisonous BP oil spill dispersants

[Robbien]

When you pour more than a million gallons of toxic chemical dispersants on top of an oil spill, it doesn’t just disappear. In this case, it moves to the atmosphere, where it will travel hundreds, if not thousands of miles from the site of the BP oil spill, in the form of toxic rain.

BP’s oil spill-fighting dispersant of choice is Corexit 9500. It has been banned in Europe for good reason. Corexit 9500 is one of the most environmentally enduring, toxic chemical dispersants ever created to battle an oil spill. Add to that the millions of gallons of oil that have been burned, releasing even more toxins into the atmosphere, and you have a recipe for something much worse than acid rain.

Oil in the environment is toxic at 11 PPM (parts per million). Corexit 9500 is toxic at only 2.61 PPM. But Corexit 9500 has another precarious characteristic; it’s reaction to warm water.

As the water in the Gulf of Mexico heats up, Corexit 9500 goes through a molecular transition. It changes from a liquid to a gas, which is readily absorbed by clouds and released as toxic rain. The chemical-laden rain then falls on crops, reservoirs, animals and of course, people.

What makes ‘Corexit rain’ so frightening are the carcinogens it will leave behind on everything is touches. Acid rain will be considered genial after it is inevitably replaced by the far more virulent ‘Corexit rain.’

It is futile to believe that we can keep ‘Corexit rain’ from occurring - it has already been released and the molecular transformation has begun. We have set off an unprecedented chain of events in nature that we cannot control.


http://www.examiner.com/x-33986-Political-Spin-Examiner~y2010m6d17-North-America-facing-years-of-toxic-rain-from-poisonous-BP-oil-spill-dispersants


The news just keeps getting better and better.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. We are getting screwed..again and again and again...

and never even got a dinner out of the deal.

[Robbien]

4. I've also been reading about the methane that is trapped

in the reservoir that Horizon drilled.

scary stuff:

More than a year ago some geologists rang the warning bell that the Deepwater Horizon exploratory operation might have been set up directly over a huge underground reservoir of methane.

Documents from several years ago indicate that the geologic formation deep underground indicates the presence of a huge methane deposit.

None other than the engineer who helped lead the team to snuff the Gulf oil fires set by Saddam Hussein to slow the advance of American troops has stated that a huge underground lake of methane gas—compressed by a pressure of 100,000 pounds per square inch (psi)—could be released by BP's drilling effort to obtain the oil deposit.

Current engineering technology cannot contain gas that is pressurized to 100,000 psi.

By some estimates the methane could be as big as a massive 15 to 20 mile toxic and explosive bubble trapped for eons under the Gulf sea floor. In their opinion, the explosive destruction of the Deepwater Horizon wellhead was an accident waiting to happen.

Yet the catastrophe that followed pales by comparison to the apocalyptic disaster that may come.

A cascading catastrophe

According to worried geologists, the first signs that the methane may burst its way through the bottom of the ocean would be signs of fissures or cracks appearing on the ocean floor near the damaged well head.

Evidence of fissures opening up on the seabed have been captured by the robotic submersibles working to repair and contain the ruptured well and by smaller plumes appearing outside the nearby radius of the bore hole itself.

According to some geological experts, BP's operations set into motion a series of events that may be irreversible. Step-by-step the drilling team committed one error after another

more . . .
http://www.helium.com/items/1864136-how-the-ultimate-bp-gulf-disaster-could-kill-millions


I believe BP believes that if they keep their head down all the media attention will go away and this will be ended. But I believe this is not the end. Nowhere near the end. Not even nowhere near the end of the beginning.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach tells me your right...

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Gee, you think our gov't would have done something more about this than a few

strongly worded letters. :mad:

I suppose the only "silver lining" is that this crap will affect everyone, not just we innocent bystanders. *sigh*

[flyarm]

3. absolutely.but ask yourself this How did BP just happen to get millions of gallons of

Corexit to the Gulf so fast??????? Does anyone here believe that they couldn't get booms down to the gulf..but they could get millions of gallons of Corexit manufactured and sent to the Gulf..and get dispersed throughout the Gulf..but they couldn't get Ships into the Gulf to skim the Gulf??

Anyone think of asking these questions?

And how could or would our government allow this??????This stuff is so damn dangerous..AND DO NOT THINK FOR ONE MINUTE THIS SHIT WON'T EFFECT YOU..because one good storm in the gulf and if this hits the Jet stream right this shit will go all the way to Canada..and it will go into the atmosphere and be in rain and snow all the way to the Rockies!


I got this info from an environemntal person..sorry there is no link to it!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

If the BP executives were ignorant of what they were doing, they should have been stopped by officials of our federal government.
Even if our government officials were ignorant of how lethal Corexit really was, they should still be held accountable for all the death and destruction they have allowed, by not stopping BP's use of Corexit.
This is death that can never be cleaned up from beneath the sea or from shorelines, without creating greater disasters.
What kind of psychopaths would even think of manufacturing something like Corexit, much less put over a million gallons of it into our pristine coastal waters?


With luck the toxicity of the crude oil and Corexit mixture will dissipate, as plumes of this shit travels up our Atlantic seaboard toward the cities of Norfolk, Richmond, Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Montreal.
However if , the heated vapors from this lethal mixture get into the Jet Stream, in the upper reaches of our troposphere, and then fall as rain or snow, the dire results on all life in the entire United States, east of the Rockies, is almost impossible to calculate. Such toxic precipitation could destroy every living plant it touches, not to mention the human lives it could take.

[salguine]

7. You keep forgetting...for all intents and purposes,

BP IS the government. And Cigna, and GlaxoSmithKline, and Citibank, and Goldman Sachs...They own your government, lock stock and Senator. There's your answer.

[Raster]

10. No shit! There's another thread where someone asks "...can't we put the "Obama is a corporatist"

...meme to bed...":rofl: Everyone with any power in American government is a corporatist. You cannot be in power in American government without being sanctioned by the ruling oligarchy. And if you try to buck the corporatist oligarchy and their agenda, they kill you. It's as simple as that.

[salguine]

6. It's time to start holding BP officials face-down in oily marshes until they stop struggling.

[liberalla]

8. K&R

I've had a sick feeling about this 'spill' from day one...

[Raster]

9. BP, Corexit rain and methane super bubble. The hits just keep on comin'!

1. BP and Transocean drilled a well deeper than they had permits for; deeper than they had the technology to fix any "problems," even outright lying to regulators about their contingency plans in place;
   
2. BP and Transocean deliberately cut corners and violated industry safety standards to drill this well and bring it on-line because of the tremendous profit potential;
   
3. Industry insiders--even employees of BP--had major concerns about safety. All the concerns were roundly dismissed and complainers were quickly marginalized;
   
4. BP and Transocean were warned that they may be drilling into a super-bubble of ultra-high pressurized methane, an extremely volatile and explosive greenhouse gas. BP and Transocean were further warned that the ultra-high pressurized methane bubble was probably under such high pressure that our current drilling and casement technology was inadequate to deal with the potential pressures. Those concerns were shrugged off by BP and Transocean.
   
5. We now learn that it was probably the explosive action of the ultra-highly pressurized methane bubble being tapped that: (a) blew out the well; and (b) caused the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to explode killing 11 people;
   
6. We now have poisonous crude oil gushing unchecked from the damaged wellhead at the rate of hundreds of thousands of gallons a day, AT THE MINIMUM. We don't know for sure, partly because BP has not allowed outside experts to examine their data, except for the closed-circuit television relay that they were forced to make available;
   
7. We now know that BP is using one of the most toxic and lethal chemical dispersants on this oil spill, whose sole purpose is to break-up THE APPEARANCE of huge oil slick menacing the American coastline. This dispersant has the capability of being "...readily absorbed by clouds and released as toxic rain. The chemical-laden rain then falls on crops, reservoirs, animals and of course, people."