Review: Sound Truth and Corporate Myth$: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

Sound Truth and Corporate Myth$: The Legacy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill by Riki Ott
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

"This book doesn't just change our view of the Exxon Valdez spill; it forces us to dramatically reassess the risks from petroleum and the enormous costs that industry is imposing on our health and planet."

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
President, Waterkeeper Alliance

Legacy of the spill: The book exposes the long-lasting environmental damage caused by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and chronicles the health problems experienced by cleanup workers.
The toxicity of oil: Dr. Ott, a marine biologist, shows how the event provided a "portal to understanding a startling truth: oil is much more toxic than we previously thought". Specifically, she details the harmful effects of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a component of crude oil that the EPA designated as "persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic" in 1999.
Corporate accountability: The book reveals how corporate greed, government negligence, and media manipulation concealed the full truth about the deadliness of PAHs. It calls for people and policymakers to inspire a shift toward a clean energy future.

Chronic Symptoms (1990 to 2003)

Nagel traveled in Central America off and on for the next three years. His health started to deteriorate. He said, "It seemed like every time there was a flu going around, I always got it and it stayed with me longer than anyone else." He was in Costa Rica in 1994 when he became very, very ill. He checked into a hospital and discovered he had cancerous tumors in his stomach and intestines. During emergency surgery, part of his stomach and intestines were removed.

When he was in Portland, Oregon, teaching a Hazwoper class on early response and hazardous waste handling, a friend jokingly asked him if he would like some Inipol? Nagel responded, "Exxon or French?" His friend handed him the original MSDS on Inipol from the French company, Elf Aquataine. Nagel was stunned-the French MSDS showed that Inipol caused cancer in laboratory mice; the MSDS supplied by Exxon in 1989 did not. Exxon had supposedly altered the chemical composition of the product, however, the captain realized the time frame between product testing and approval was probably too short to determine if the revised product caused cancer in mice.

Dr. Miller collaborated with Nicholas Ashford, PhD, a professor of Technology and Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses in environmental and occupational health law and policy. They published a groundbreaking book, Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes (John Wiley & Sons: New York, 1991), which they revised in 1998. In it they explain their view that chemical sensitivity is not just a single syndrome, but rather a whole new class of disease, which they describe as "toxicant-induced loss of tolerance" or TILT. This phrase takes into account the fact that caffeine, alcoholic beverages, various drugs, and foods can trigger "chemical" sensitivity symptoms in individuals who already have lost their natural tolerance through an acute chemical exposure or other initiating event.

By the late 1990s it was understood that the initiating event for chemical sensitivity, or more broadly TILT, can occur either as a intense abrupt event like a pesticide spill or as an intermittent repet-itive exposure (Wilkinson 1998). The EVOS cleanup workers had it both ways-the chemical exposure was intense, but also repetitive, intermittent for those who took breaks or were otherwise in and out of oiled areas, and prolonged for individuals who worked for months on the beaches. Those who studied TILT found that the nervous sys-tem, quite independent of the immune system, has the capacity to "amplify responses to stimuli that are perceived as dangerous to the organism" (ibid., 59). Once the stimulus is stopped, the nervous sys-tem initiates a process of amplification, so that the next time the per-son encounters that stimulus, or anything that can similarly trigger the nervous system, even at a much lower dose, there is an amplified or exaggerated response.

This process is known as "limbic kindling," and it is the leading theory among environmental medicine doctors to explain the etiol-ogy or cause of chemical sensitivities and other TILT symptoms (Ashford and Miller 1998; Kilburn 1998; Rea 1995; Wilkinsen 1998). Limbic kindling is a type of epilepsy that involves abnormal firing of the limbic system-the part of the brain with a direct connection to the nose. The olfactory system is the normal pathway for airborne chemicals to interact with the brain; the limbic system is where the immune, nervous, and endocrine systems interact. Chemical-induced seizures cause the amygdala in the limbic system to misfire signals to the hypothalamus, which communicates with both the olfactory and limbic systems, regulating chemicals in the entire body.

The hypothalamus governs body temperature, reproductive urges and functions, metabolism, and even aggressive behavior. It also influences some immune system functions. Disrupting the hypothalamus-with any of a variety of chemicals once a person loses his or her initial tolerance-can create havoc in many different parts of the body and lead to the multiple system dysfunction experienced by people with severe chemical sensitivities such as La Joie.

Pesticides and solvent exposures are known to cause or facilitate limbic kindling. The EPA lists 2-butoxyethanol as one of the pesticides it has tested (CAS number 111-76-2) and it lists this chemical as one of the ingredients to avoid in its Janitorial Products Pollution Prevention Program. The EPA web page states products with the listed ingredients "pose very high risks to the janitor using the product, to building occupants, or to the environment." Comments under chronic effects for 2-butoxyethanol list reproductive and fetal damage, liver and kidney damage...

Blockade
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Prince William Sound fishermen, facing financial ruin after collapses of herring and pink salmon populations, blockaded Valdez Narrows from August 20 to 23, 1993, to focus attention on the ailing Sound. As a result of this blockade, scientists funded through the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council conducted three seminal ecosystem studies and determined that very low levels of oil were much more toxic to fish and wildlife than previously thought. Similarly, medical doctors have found oil (PAHs) also poses human health risks.

Changed paradigms

Physical shoreline habitat

OLD PARADIGM: Oil that grounds on shorelines other than marshes dominated fine sediments will be rapidly dispersed and degraded microbially and pos cally

EMERGING APPRECIATION: Oil degrades at varying rates depending upon environ genation, and photolysis retaining contamination by only partially weathered of ment, with subsurface sediments physically protected from disturbance,oy for years.

Oil toxicity to fish

OLD PARADIGM: Oil effects occur solely through short-term (~4 day) exposure to water-soluble fraction (1-2 ringed aromatics dominate) through acute narcosis mortality at parts per million concentrations.

EMERGING APPRECIATION: Long-term exposure of fish embryos to weathered oil

(3-5 ringed PAHs) at parts per billion concentrations has population conse quences through indirect effects on growth, deformities, and behavior with long-term consequences on mortality and reproduction.

Oil toxicity to seabirds and marine mammals

OLD PARADIGM: Oil effects occur solely through short-term acute exposure of feathers or fur and resulting death from hypothermia, drowning, or ingestion of toxics during preening.

EMERGING APPRECIATION: Oil effects also are substantial (independent of means of

insulation) over the long term through interactions between natural environ mental stressors and compromised health of exposed animals, through chronic toxic exposure from ingesting contaminated prey or during foraging around persistent sedimentary pools of oil, and through disruption of vital social functions (care giving or reproduction) in socially organized species.

Lower level toxicity

When he called Short for advice, the chemist suggested that he

not re-coat the rocks with oil. Instead, Short suggested that he just

expose the second batch of herring eggs to water flowing over the

older, more weathered oil from gravel that had already been flushed

with water during the pervious year's experiment. Short told Carls that

the pink salmon researchers were finding effects on embryos around

one part per billion PAHs-and that the larger PAHs, the ones that

weathered out last into the water, were more harmful to salmon

embryos than the aromatic hydrocarbons in the WSF. Carls decided to

take a chance. He exposed the second batch of artificially fertilized

herring eggs to initial PAH levels in the water of less than one part per

billion, a fraction of the level supposedly "safe" for marine life. The data were crystal clear-and astonishing. Larvae exposed to oil from the first experiment had twisted spines, misshapen jaws, and other skeletal deformities as well as genetic damage (Carls, Rice, and Hose 1999). The tiny fish had metabolic problems and tissue damage as well, a frequent problem being severe "ascites" or swollen bellies caused by retained water. The balloon-bellies restricted blood flow to tissues and organs, stunting growth and development. Larvae exposed to oil had trouble swimming, they were a smaller size because of premature hatch, and many more died than larvae not exposed to any oil. Carls detected harmful effects in larvae exposed to initial PAH levels that were 30 times lower than the federal water quality standard. Results from the second batch of eggs were gener ally identical, but more frightening. The more weathered oil was much more toxic-larvae suffered harmful effects at initial PAH levels that were 750 times lower than the federal standards. The Bue effect!

Carls realized that state and federal laws regulating oil pollution are not at all protective of aquatic life because the laws are based on the wrong oil fraction! The Auke Bay Lab fish research proved large PAHs are much more deadly to precious fish embryos than smaller aromatic hydrocarbons in the WSF; however, the laws based on 1970s research treat the large PAHs as if they are harmless.

Pervasive persistent

What they found surprised them. Poking around with their shov-els in the quadrants and transects dictated by their study design, they discovered liquid oil at fifty-three of the ninety-one beaches. The oil was buried just below the surface and it welled into the pits, leaving a rainbow sheen on the water surface. Most of the subsurface oil was in the mid-intertidal zone-well below the bathtub ring, the visual stain in the upper intertidal area, and directly within the richly productive biological region.

Using forensic chemistry, Short analyzed dozens of typical sediment samples and determined that 90 percent of the surface oil and 100 percent of the subsurface oil was from the Exxon Valdez (Short et al. 2004). The remaining surface oil was from the Monterey (California) Formation-heating oil spilled during the 1964 earth-quake when storage tanks ruptured in Valdez. Rice and his team esti-mated the total beach area contaminated by residual Exxon Valdez oil, counting both surface and subsurface deposits, was twenty-eight acres (ibid.). They reasoned this was a low-end estimate; it did not include the lower intertidal zone where they had not sampled very extensively because they had not expected to find oil there. Instead they found this was where more of the buried oil was located. They conservatively estimated the weight of the intertidal residual oil was over 56 tons (122,320 pounds), but felt a more realistic number was probably twice that (ibid.).

While this may not seem like much in the greater scheme of things, anyone who has struggled with cancer knows it doesn't take much to threaten life. Further, the subsurface oil is harbored in the biological equivalent of a critical organ in the Sound-marshes and gravel beaches. As Phil Mundy, the science director of the EVOS Trustee Council told Meg McKinney in an April 2004 interview on KCHU public radio, these areas are relatively rare in the steep, rocky-walled fjord system and they are critical habitat for wildlife.

The stunned team mulled over their discovery. How could hundreds of scientists completely have missed the mother lode of oil for twelve years? This was not oil that had migrated down slope from the and it was consistently there, buried in the middle intertidal zone, upper to the lower intertidal over time-there was too much of it low

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