You Can Use It On Your Salad
Geoff Pender of the Biloxi Sun-Herald tells us that according to Mississippi leaders: Spill’s environmental impact overhyped
Gov. Haley Barbour, and the chiefs of the state’s two main environmental agencies — the Departments of Marine Resources and Environmental Quality — have proposed that this natural cleanup, along with some relatively minor scouring of tar off the beaches by BP workers, can be handled in a matter of weeks or a few months, not years.
“That oil might be degraded all the way to CO2 and water in a matter of weeks,” said DMR Director Bill Walker. “It might be six weeks, might be 10 weeks, but we are not talking about years.”
The it’s-not-so-bad crowd says the media and environmentalists have overhyped the environmental impact of the BP disaster, especially for Mississippi. The Magnolia State, thanks to geography, weather and tides, has been spared heavier oiling seen by its sister Gulf states.
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Barbour, DMR Director Bill Walker, DEQ Director Trudy Fisher and Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant have all described the oil and tar that has made its way to Mississippi waters and shores as “nontoxic.” Barbour said the “first cuts,” or volatile chemicals in the crude such as benzene, evaporate quickly near the well site and that the oil that makes it further into the Gulf is “emulsified and weathered.”
The federal Centers for Disease Control has reported that air tests in the area for benzene, a potentially harmful volatile chemical found in crude, have shown no levels higher than normal.
Walker says that tests of seafood tissue in Mississippi have “never had a positive hit” for oil contamination. Walker, and a NOAA scientist, say that petroleum hydrocarbons do not “bioaccumulate” and are quickly metabolized and excreted by fish and other species. NOAA scientist Buck Sutter, in a letter to Walker, said, “I don’t think (petroleum hydrocarbons) being passed through the food chain is an issue.”
…Barbour has also said the risk to wildlife from oiling is not as bad as some have been saying.
“Once it gets to this stage, it’s not poisonous,” Barbour said. “But if a small animal got coated enough with it, it could smother it. But if you got enough toothpaste on you, you couldn’t breathe.”
This is the “brain trust” charged with keeping Mississippi’s environment clean. According to them, you don’t need to spend all that money on extra virgin olive oil – just pop down to Auto Zone for a quart of 10W30.
About their testing program on seafood – they have people smell it for the odor of oil. That’s it, that’s all that they are doing. None of those fancy tests that require a college degree, if you can see it or smell it, it isn’t there.
Attending a Barbour fish fry is probably not a good idea.
10 comments
At a Barbour fish fry, the fish fry themselves!
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Ah, Mississippi… the state almost purposely designed to make even Texas look good. Growing up, I heard about the Texas Aggie who moved from Texas to Mississippi and thereby raised the average IQ of both states.
Barbour is almost a caricature of a public official. Unfortunately for Mississippians, he IS a public official. Perhaps he doesn’t have to work very hard to “lead” his citizens to believe everything is just hunky-dory, but it astonishes me how people can elect someone who arguably lies to them even more than GeeDubya used to.
I don’t think they understand what a “blackened red fish” is supposed to mean, Badtux.
It’s damn hard to feel sorry for people who keep imposing things like Haley Barbour on themselves. They go along with this stupidity knowing how bad it is going to be, Steve. One of my local professors was a department chair at a Mississippi state university but left to join the faculty at a local high school because the pay and benefits were so much better for PhDs in Florida high schools. He was an adjunct at a local university to keep his hand in at the university level.
But Bryan, oil is a spice, right? Besides, they’re *self-blackening* red fish — they catch on fire with just the strike of a match! 😈
Yeah, right, no one is going to get upset when they start putting “flammable” stickers on the seafood…
The new MRE – a red snapper fillet and a kitchen match.
Meals Rapidly Eaten? It’s quickly or not at all.
Hmmm. When I was in the Army, we thought MRE stood for “Meals, Rapidly Expectorated”! 😈 (and yeah… big word for lowly Army pukes!)
(There’s a reason the nic-name IS ‘Army Pukes’ after all)! 😈
OK… That’s done that to death! 😈
It will probably be gone in a flash, Steve. Some cooking oils do add flavor, but dead dinosaur is not exactly anything I crave.
Oh, yes, Kryten, it took a “real man” to keep down some of the things that were in military rations, especially some of the stuff that came to remote sites.
The new MRE’s, on the other hand, are rather tasty. There’s a few exceptions — the Army still is baffled about vegetarians and the vegetarian MRE entrees are mostly awful — but the majority are quite palatable to a red-blooded American boy raised on Chef-boy-ar-dee and steak and pork roast. Unlike the self-blackening redfish :(.
– Badtux the Culinary Penguin
Come on, they include hot sauce now and that’s the difference.
If you deep fry it and offer mayonnaise and hot sauce a Southerner will eat it – even the carton 😉