This will make my life a lot easier.
Month: August 2010
Oopsie
This is disturbing news, via Florida Oil Spill Law. If toxic levels of Corexit are making people sick in Florida, that’s not good:
“Our heads are still swimming,” stated Barbara Schebler of Homosassa, Florida, who received word last Friday that test results on the water from her family’s swimming pool showed 50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, a marker for
the dispersant Corexit 9527A used to break up and sink BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
The problems began for the Scheblers a few weeks after the April 20 blow-out. “Our first clue were rashes we both got early in May. Both my husband and I couldn’t get rid of the rashes and had to get cream from our doctor,” Schebler noted, “I never had a rash in my life.”Then, on “July [23], my husband Warren mowed the lawn. It was hot so he got in the pool to cool off afterward. That afternoon he had severe diarrhea and very dark urine. This lasted about 2 days,” she revealed.
Initially, they reasoned this was caused by the heat. The following week Mr. Schebler again mowed the lawn and went in the pool, and again he was sickened with the same severe symptoms.Suspicious that the pool may be a problem, the family set out to get the water tested. “We have a 15 year old and felt we owed it to him to live in a clean, healthy environment,” said Mrs. Schebler.
The Scheblers found Robert Naman, a Mobile, Alabama chemist who’s performed multiple tests (1, 2, 3) for WKRG Channel 5, also out of Mobile.“Warren collected a water sample from the pool filter on August 17th… packed the sample according to Mr. Naman’s instructions, and overnighted it to his Mobile, Ala. lab that same day,” she noted.
The results were delivered by Naman over the phone on August 27 at 11:00 a.m. EDT. A copy of the findings were then e-mailed to the Scheblers. To view the document, click here.“Naman [said] our pool water sample we sent him contained 50.3 ppm [parts per million] 2-butoxyethanol marker for Corexit,” according to Mrs. Schebler. Tests for arsenic came back at less than .02 ppm.
A July letter from four top scientists noted, “Corexit 9527A contains 2-BTE (2-butoxyethanol), a toxic solvent that ruptures red blood cells, causing hemolysis (bleeding) and liver and kidney damage (Johanson and Bowman, 1991, Nalco, 2010).”The safety data sheet provided by Nalco, the manufacturer of Corexit 9527A, warns, “Harmful if absorbed through skin. May be harmful if swallowed. May cause liver and kidney effects and/or damage. There may be irritation to the gastro-intestinal tract.
”Mr. Schebler’s “severe diarrhea and very dark urine” appear to indicate gastro-intestinal tract irritation.BP Press Officer Daren Beaudo released a statement on August 28 that reads, “Unified Command records indicate that the last date of use of the Corexit 9527 was May 22,” almost three months before the samples were taken from the pool.
Yet, the Schebler’s report is the second time in the last 10 days that the 2-butoxyethanol marker for Corexit 9527A has been discovered near the Gulf. It has also been found near the Florida border in Cotton Bayou, AL, at about 1/4 the level as in Homosassa, FL. A WKRG segment from August 19 featured an inland water sample that tested for 13.3 ppm of the Corexit dispersant.The question remains, how did this chemical find its way into the Schebler’s pool in such a high concentration?
“At night we would hear very low aircraft, including helicopters. We figured they were just heading to help out in the Gulf,” and Mrs. Schebler added that she was told, “The prevailing winds from the Gulf are easterly — and when they spray, it is airborne — and that we are right in the path of those winds.” It was also noted that, “We had a lot of rain here before my husband got sick, and wondered what was going on… We had been having daily downpours in July.”
Back To Me
Kathleen Edwards live:
Monday Night Songs
I Think About You. I can’t for the life of me remember who does this, might be Kathleen Edwards…(An alert reader identifies the singer as Eliza Gilkyson. Thanks!)
It’s Over, Alison Krauss. I still remember the first time I heard this. I was about to take a shower and I had WXPN’s bluegrass show on the radio when this pure, amazing voice filled the air. I was just floored.
Harley, one of the wonderfully whimsical songs from Nashville songwriter Don Henry.
100 Years, Five for Fighting. One of the few songs where I can play the keyboard part (learned it off a YouTube video)!
Restaurant Scene, Jules Shear. This song always reminds me of the charming alcoholic judge. We would only go to restaurants in the ‘burbs where he knew the owners, and he would go around glad-handing everyone in the place — when he wasn’t sitting at the table drinking. There’s a novel in there somewhere…
Her Town, Too
James Taylor and J.D. Souther:
Privilege
I wrote the other day about the attacks on writer Liz Gilbert as a “white woman of privilege.” But if you really want to talk about privilege, well, I’m a lot more disturbed by articles like this. Because if you ever wonder why the Washington elite is so very, very out of touch with the rest of our lives, it just might be because there’s a huge class moat built around the District of Columbia that makes sure only the right people get on the career track that allows them into the bubble:
Each year, thousands of college students descend on Washington for unpaid internships. It can be a nerve-racking process: sending out résumés, trying to make contacts, interviewing again and again.
Increasingly, many of them are finding an alternative: paying thousands of dollars to a placement company for a guaranteed spot.
It’s a business just starting to appear in other cities. In Washington, it’s been thriving for years.
Estimates of the annual number of interns locally range from 20,000 to 40,000. The placement programs provide about 2,500 of these interns, with the number growing each year.
For their money — often funded with taxpayer-subsidized loans — students get an internship, housing, night classes, tours of Washington and college credit. But most say they sign up for the work experience.
“I wanted experience. I was worried about graduating and not getting a job,” said Brian Schiller, 21, a soon-to-be college senior from Sherborn, Mass., who interned at an executive search firm this summer through the Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars. “I needed an internship, and they found me one.”
[…] Those involved routinely point out that the programs cost less than some colleges charge for tuition. And as long as students receive academic credit, they are usually able to pay using their student loans, federal Pell grants or other forms of financial aid. Most companies offer scholarships, some funded by state governments, some by the companies.
Emily Goyert, 21, and her parents debated her decision to get an internship through the Fund for American Studies. She was unable to transfer any credits to the University of Michigan, where she will be a senior.
“We definitely just viewed it as an investment in my future,” said Goyert, who interned at the Living Classrooms Foundation and created a weekend program for a D.C. neighborhood. “There are only so many internships, and everyone wants one.”
The tuition payments add up to millions of dollars of revenue for the internship programs, many of which operate as nonprofit groups, pay their top employees six-figure salaries and set up shop in prime D.C. real estate.
Oh What A World
The fabulous Rufus Wainwright:
Of Course
New York magazine has a great piece about the proposed Muslim mosque that has the wingnuts in such a twist, and we learn the real reason for the location: The real estate market!
If There Is A Hell
Haley Barbour will go there when he dies:
Yesterday on CBS’ Face The Nation, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour applauded conservative Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller for opposing federal aid to his own state.
On what grounds? Because slashing state budgets in the middle of a recession is no big deal.
Gov. Barbour said: “As far as talking about less money [from Washington], look, my budget this year in Mississippi is 13% less than it was two years ago. I cut spending 9.7% last year. Frankly, nobody much noticed the difference. People weren’t kicked off Medicaid.”
Funny story: On the same day, Gov. Barbour said no one was kicked off Medicaid, the Mississippi’s Clarion-Ledger headlined: “Medicaid winnows out some children.”
Not all children of course. Just some with Down syndrome.
Go read the rest.
Update
Glenn has the details. The Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU have been granted a license to sue the U.S. for ordering the assassination of Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen, without due process.
They’re also proceeding with a lawsuit challenging the procedure that requires them to get permission to sue.