Stan's Chair
(Items from Stan Spangler, a site editor)
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6/11/10 (unfinished as of that date; completed later)
Underpublicized, underquantified oil spill dangers:
A few nights ago (6/7/10) I Googled the following group of five words: oil, spill, VOC, birth, defects. Out of a reported approximately 24,700 results, the number one ranked result was (justifiably) an item by Gina Solomon, MD, MPH.
The third-ranking item was this particular site, the Progressive. I'm glad we're apparently of some relevance, but we shouldn't have been anywhere near as high as number three on that list. If the government, mainstream media, and medical establishment were serving the public as I feel they should be, many other entries should have appeared ahead of the Progressive.
My most relevant experience relative to the oil spill is four years of Vietnam-era Air Force experience as a health physicist, eventually reaching the level of Senior Health Physicist. With the oil spill, there are toxins that cause DNA breakage and therefore carcinogenesis and teratogenesis (birth defects). In my assignment in the Air Force, one large area of my work was similar: concern about DNA breakage, carcinogenesis, and teratogenis, but caused by various sources of ionizing radiation, not by crude oil toxins.
I (and surely many others) have little doubt that as has been the case with ionizing radiation, the more research that is done on the health effects of crude oil toxins, the more it will become clear that smaller and smaller amounts will be shown to be hazardous in terms of DNA breakage, carcinogenesis, and teratogenesis. Also, an increaing variety of negative health effects will almost surely be found. (At this point, the amount of research that has been done on the toxic effects of crude oil compounds is "not exactly overwhelming.")
Added 11/3/10:
Humans in the region of the spill have effectively been "guinea pigs," and emerging information shows this spill has been (and continues to be) a very, very serious human health hazard. Will it reach or has it already reached the level of "human health disaster?" Human health catastrophe?