CategoryTesting

Six months into the sinkhole crisis, Texas Brine decides to see what’s going on down there

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The last time that we visited the sinkhole in Bayou Corne, the situation did not look good. The giant hole on the earth, in the heart of bayou country between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, was getting so big that some experts were predicting that it would soon be nearly big enough to hold the Louisiana Superdome, site of Sunday’s Super Bowl. But it wasn’t just the hole, but the...

It gets worse at La. sinkhole as toxic gas released

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On this Thanksgiving eve, let us not forget about the poor residents of Bayou Corne, La. It’s coming up on four months since 150 families in this rural bayou community about 70 miles west of New Orleans were forced from their homes with the appearance of an ever-widening sinkhole — the culmination of weeks of bubbling gases in local waters, earth tremors and noxious smells...

Threat to Bayou Corne grows as tests show elevated levels of radium, butane traces in and near sinkhole

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Elevated levels of radium in the water and tests showing airborne indicators of butane — the highly explosive fuel stored in a nearby cavern — are two alarming signs that the environmental catastrophe in the Louisiana town of Bayou Corne is far from over. The disturbing new information comes from both air and water testing at and near the massive and growing sinkhole in the bayou, 70...

Editorial Correction: Closure of Gulf Waters to Shrimping Is Routine

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CORRECTION: On April 21, ABC affiliate WEAR-TV, which covers Pensacola, Moblie and Fort Walton, reported on its website that some areas of the Gulf were being closed on the morning of April 23 due to concerns over the presence of smaller-than-normal shrimp and shrimp with “lesions.” That report was in line with a multitude of other recent mainstream media reports – from the Associated...

A Taste of the Grotesque in the Gulf: Eyeless Shrimp, Clawless Crabs and Lesion-Covered Fish

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Nearly two years on from the worst oil spill in U.S. history, seafood coming out of the Gulf of Mexico looks like it belongs in a shop of horrors rather than an all-you-can-eat buffet. Severely deformed shrimp with bulging tumors – and no eyes. Red snapper and grouper riddled with deep lesions and oozing sores. Eyeless, clawless blue crabs. So goes the parade of the “seafood...

Oil Companies Blamed for More Than 3,000 Dead Dolphins in Peru

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Dead dolphins are washing ashore by the hundreds on a stretch of coastline less than 100 miles long in Peru. The corpses are stacking up so quickly that removal and disposal efforts are overwhelming local authorities. Commercial fishermen estimate that more than 3,000 dead dolphins have washed up on the beaches here over the last three months, nearly 500 in recent days. It is one of the largest...

More from Macondo? Fresh, Highly Toxic BP Oil Rolls Ashore in Alabama’s “Seafood Capital”

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All the slick BP tourism ads and fat research grants and indignant denials in the world can’t change one crushing reality for the Gulf Coast: There’s still fresh, highly toxic oil from the Macondo reservoir fouling our waters and shoreline. The “old-world” fishing community of Bayou La Batre, once hailed as the “Seafood Capital of Alabama,” has been dealing...

New Oil Spill Study: Gulf Bottlenose Dolphins Are Underweight, Anemic and Show Signs of Liver and Lung Disease

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In the wake of the BP oil spill, hundreds of dead bottlenose dolphins – some visibly oiled – washed up on Gulf Coast beaches at a rate nearly 10 times the norm. Many more died at sea. Dozens were stranded alive, severely ill and disoriented. During the summer of 2011, NOAA conducted “comprehensive physicals” on 32 live dolphins to determine the “post-spill health” of the...

BP Resource Manual Directly Contradicts Official Company Assurances that Corexit Posed No Health Risk

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As oil gushed from the Macondo Well in the spring of 2010, BP officials calmly assured tens of thousands of wary cleanup workers that the chemical dispersant Corexit posed no more of a health risk than Dawn dish detergent. Now, with many of the 90,000 workers suffering from a range of debilitating symptoms associated with chemical poisoning, a whistleblower has provided the federal government...

BP Oil Spill May Have Caused Fish Embryos to “Disintegrate” En Masse

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The damage the BP oil spill caused to fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico may be even more devastating than previously thought – and the recovery may be much longer and more difficult than expected. New groundbreaking research from the University of California Davis reveals that fish embryos that absorbed oil and were then exposed to sunlight “physically disintegrated” in a phenomenon...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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