EPA Whistleblower Says Federal Government Covering Up Lethality Of Corexit And Lying About BP Gulf Oil Spill Water Samples To Save BP Billions
Posted by Alexander Higgins - July 24, 2010 at 5:29 pm - Permalink
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Democracy Now has published a shocking interview with a top EPA official, Hugh Kaufman, who tells us that NOAA and the EPA are covering up the lethal effects of the neurotoxin pesticide dispersants and lying about Gulf Oil Spill water samples to save BP billions of dollars in fines.

In the interview with Democracy Now! Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, reveals some appalling details to the public.

Here are some highlights of the revelations made by Hugh Kaufman.

Well, 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.

…

… People who work near [Corexit] are hemorrhaging internally [but the] 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.

… 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.

…

We know there is a cover up.

Dispersants are being used.

[In] 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.

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.

…

I did the ombudsman investigation on Ground Zero, where EPA made false statements about the safety of the air, which has since, of course, been proven to be false.

Consequently, you have the heroes, the workers here, a large percentage of them are sick right now, not even ten years later, and most of them will die early because of respiratory problems, cancer, etc., because of EPA’s false statements.

…

And you’ve got the same thing going on in the Gulf, EPA administrators saying the same thing, that the air is safe and the water is safe.

And the [EPA] administrator misled Senator Mikulski on that issue in the hearings you talked about.

And basically, the problem is dispersants mixed with oil and air pollution.

[The] EPA, like in 9/11—I did that investigation nine years ago—was not doing adequate and proper testing.

So we now have statements directly from a top EPA official that Government Agencies are doing doing inadequate and improper testing of Gulf waters and statements stating the Government is lying to the public about the dangers of Corexit to save BP millions of dollars in fines.

In the interview Hugh Kaufman then goes on to discuss how independent water tests performed by an local news station directly contradicted EPA test results and proved that the director of the EPA lied under oath in a congressional hearing about water samples taken from the Dauphin Island Alabama area.

And the Dauphin Island water samples are only one of many instances in which the EPA has lied about the contamination of Gulf waters.

For example independent water tests performed by Project Gulf Impact showed high levels of Corexit in the waters around Grand Isle, Louisiana while EPA data shows no such contamination.

In fact in my last post I actually dug through the test results of all of the water samples that the EPA has done up until July 13th and pointed out dozens of instances showing the EPA is lying.

The bottom line here is that the Federal Government agencies has allowed tens of thousands of Americans to be poisoned during the Exxon Valdez and during 9/11 and history is once again repeating itself.

Why? To protect the profits of the billion dollar corporations from having to pay out liability claims and fines.

We find ourselves once again in the same exact situation again.

The difference is we now have a top EPA official warning us that the Government is allowing us to be poisoned and lying to us about it just to save BP money.

Furthermore it is clear that the available evidence corroborates the claims of this official yet we sit idle allow it to happen.

When will we finally act and do something about it?

When tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents end up with cancer, genetic mutations or some other mysterious unexplained illnesses?

Why must we wait until after the damage is done when we can act now and prevent that damage from being done?

Perhaps we are not motivated to do anything because at this point it time it does not directly affect us?

But surely there has been enough oil and toxic dispersant released into the Gulf of Mexico to contaminate the food chain and even NOAA has admitted that may have already happened.

So then why must we wait until it is us or our children that have been poisoned?

Now is the time to act to put an end to the Government coverups of environmental disasters such as the BP Gulf Oil Spill.

Scientific research has already revealed that the BP Gulf Oil Spill has created a massive dead zone off the Coast of Alabama and BP is already paying off scientists and universities to keep such research from the public.

Yet instead of revealing such data to the public the Federal Government says it can’t make such information public because of litigation with BP but immediately turns over the data BP.

If we simply sit by and continue to allow this to happen history will continue to repeat itself until we become part of the collateral damage ourselves.

If we don’t act now sooner or later it will be us and our children that are being poisoned in the name of profits for big corporations.