Scary stuff - re: chemical contamination of food

I've been eating organic food on purpose for a long time. Didn't realize that conventional produce was also sprayed with defoliants.

People nitpick on things like this and try to tell you that if these chemicals weren't safe, farmers wouldn't use them or be allowed to use them. People tend to use extreme scales to decide if something is safe, such as if you get cancer or not. It's not like something makes you deathly ill or does no harm to you. Also, hardly anything gives you cancer right away...So shortsighted, willfully blind. Who would spray things like this on their meals after preparing them? Virtually no one. But as long as they don't see it, it's fine. Like it's any different.

BP does not allow cleanup crews on the water to wear masks or complain publicly

I guess they are trying to avoid giving people the idea that crude oil is unhealthy.

A fisherman who was hospitalized after becoming ill while cleaning up oil in the Gulf of Mexico has filed a temporary restraining order in federal court against oil company BP.

John Wunstell Jr., is asking BP to give the workers masks and not harass workers who publicly voice their health concerns.

Wunstell, a shrimper, said he was paid by BP to use his boat, Ramie's Wish, to clean up oil that has been gushing into the Gulf since an oil rig sank about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, gushing an estimated 19,000 barrels (798, 000 gallons) of crude a day.

In an affidavit, Wunstell wrote he started experiencing severe headaches and nasal irritation on May 24. Over the next few days, he also developed nosebleeds, an upset stomach, and aches.

On Friday, Wunstell was airlifted to West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana, where he remained hospitalized Sunday...

In his affidavit, Wunstell described his experience at the hospital.

"At West Jefferson, there were tents set up outside the hospital, where I was stripped of my clothing, washed with water and several showers, before I was allowed into the hospital," Wunstell said. "When I asked for my clothing, I was told that BP had confiscated all of my clothing and it would not be returned."

The restraining order requests that BP refrain from "altering, testing or destroying clothing or any other evidence or potential evidence" when workers become ill.

Man, turns out it's all a lie. I hate when I've been had:

Graham MacEwen, a spokesman for BP, said he could not comment on the restraining order, or on allegations that BP confiscated clothing.

He denied accusations from Clint Guidry, president of the Louisiana Shrimpers Association, that BP has been threatening workers who speak out about health concerns.

Fishermen contacted by CNN have declined to speak publicly.

Some, who are making as much as $3,000 a day cleaning up the oil, have said they fear losing their jobs with BP.

"The BP oil spill wiped out their professions and their jobs this year and possibly years down the road," Klick said. "The only work they can get right now is with BP."

The BP spokesman said there have been no threats against workers for speaking out.

That's good to hear, that they aren't threatening them. I guess they also aren't threatening them for failing to wear masks, as they are admittedly not providing their workers with them:

Corexit, a dispersant, is being sprayed into the Gulf to break down the oil. The safety data information sheet from the manufacturer states that people should "avoid breathing in vapor" from Corexit, and that masks should be work when Corexit is present in certain concentrations in the air.

BP has not supplied workers with masks when they work near the oil and dispersants.

"We're been carrying out very extensive air quality since early on in this exercise, to make sure that we have working safe conditions, and thus far not found situations where there are air quality concerns that would require face masks," MacEwen said.

He added that workers who want to wear masks are "free to do so" as long as they receive instructions from their supervisors on how to use them.

According to Guidry from the shrimpers' association, BP told workers they were not allowed to wear masks.

"Some of our men asked, and they were told they'd be fired if they wore masks," he said.

Fired for wearing masks, awesome.

Also, Tony Hayward makes up the most fantastic fucking lies. Why hasn't someone offed this fuck yet?

Tony Hayward, the chief executive officer of BP, offered another explanation for the fishermen's illness: spoiled food.

"Food poisoning is clearly a big issue," Hayward said Sunday. "It's something we've got to be very mindful of. It's one of the big issues of keeping the Army operating. You know, the Army marches on their stomachs."

An expert on foodborne illness cast doubt on Hayward's theory.

"Headaches, shortness of breath, nosebleeds -- there's nothing there that suggests foodborne illness," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. "I don't know what these people have, but it sounds more like a respiratory illness."

Holy shit. The shit he says isn't even realistic. I guess it doesn't have to be. As long as he pulls in money, no one cares. It's not like he's up for reelection.

Addendum to "When we poison the world..."

So yesterday, I came upon this NPR article about two Canadian men documenting how toxic and quietly self-destructive our everyday Canadian/American lives are:

Inspired by Morgan Spurlock's fast-food gluttony in the movie Super Size Me, two environmental activists from Canada devised their own experiment. Instead of fast food, Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie absorbed themselves in everyday products like shampoos, soaps and cleaners to find out what kind of damage might be done to their health.

Their book about the adventure is called Slow Death by Rubber Duck: The Secret Danger of Everyday Things. Smith tells Guy Raz that writing the book was like conducting an adult science fair project — with one cardinal rule.

"Our experiments had to mimic everyday life," Smith says. "Obviously it would be very easy to dramatically increase your Teflon levels if you were willing to drink some Teflon, but nobody does that, so it wouldn't have any applicability to daily life."

But Smith and Lourie didn't need to take baths in mercury or eat tuna for a whole year to see the chemical levels in their bodies skyrocket. After just two days of eating only canned food microwaved in plastic containers and drinking from one of his son's old baby bottles, Smith saw a major rise in the levels of BPA in his body.

"My levels increased over eight times," he says. "You can only imagine what the levels in an infant would look like if after two or three years of their sole source of nutrition being a BPA baby bottle. Their levels would just be through the roof."

The book they wrote should be a pretty interesting read, showing anyone who's daring enough to read how profoundly poisonous (western/westernized? I don't know. Humans are humans, one species. It seems kind of silly to divide along culture/ethnicity lines in that sense. It's like saying some kinds of people are bad, but others aren't. I really do think it's a species-level biological issue, not simply culture. This is a much longer debate, I know) humans have made not just the world in general, but the homes in which they live, the food they eat and even the containers and delivery mechanisms for that food. We buy this shit every day with no qualms, and likely not even any thoughts. Just keep pushing ahead, pretending that everything will be ok. Cause it always has been, right?