seafood safety

deformed shrimpBy Michele Walker-Harmon. BP protesters are thanking oil giant BP and their highly paid public relations firm, Purple Strategies, for helping to shine the spotlight on the continuing effects of BP's Oil Drilling Disaster, effects which include ongoing health issues, questions about seafood safety and lack of adequate clean-up in many coastal areas.   
 

Just this past week I decided to leave my job as a food server at a casino in Hancock County, Mississippi.  I’ve worked in tourism for 15 years. I just could not continue to serve Gulf seafood to unsuspecting tourists and locals after the BP disaster.  There were other reasons for my leaving as well, but risking people’s health and pretending things are normal is totally against what I believe in. 

Secret industry study cites “significant risks” of cancer for people who regularly eat fish from Gulf waters.  By Stuart Smith and Mary Lee Orr. More details at: http://oilspillaction.com/

More bad news for Gulf Coast residents: A “confidential study” by the American Petroleum Institute concludes that radium in drilling wastewater dumped off the coast of Louisiana poses “potentially significant risks” of cancer for people who regularly eat fish from those waters.

dear_bpIf last Saturday’s Rally for the Truth on Grand Isle, Louisiana is any indication, a lot of gulf coast residents are angry, sick, and tired.

But they are also getting energized and organized to fight for their homeland, after seven months of a woefully inadequate response to the BP oil and dispersant crisis from the “powers that be.”


green goop 3Tuesday, Sept 14th - Over the past three days, local fishermen in Bayou La Batre, Alabama have been documenting a thick sludge that has emerged in the water along their shores.  They say it must be caused by the BP oil disaster, and they all independently described it the same way: “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

BP spokespeople and local officials, meanwhile, also have a unified message: “It’s algae.”

In the past few weeks, independent scientists, fishermen, journalists, and advocates have taken testing of Gulf waters, sand, and seafood into their own hands.  The results prove that the Gulf still has dangerous levels of oil and toxic dispersants from the BP disaster, despite claims from federal agencies and BP.

Here is a state by state overview of some of these investigations.

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