But the use of dispersants has not. Consequently, we have
people,
wildlife--we have dolphins that are hemorrhaging. People who work near
it are hemorrhaging internally. And that's what dispersants are supposed
to do. EPA now is taking the position that they really don't know how
dangerous it is, even though if you read the label, it tells you how
dangerous it is. And, for example, in the Exxon Valdez case, people who
worked with dispersants, most of them are dead now. The average death
age is around fifty. It's very dangerous, and it's an economic--it's an
economic protector of BP, not an environmental protector of the public.
Now, the one thing that I did want to mention to you, Amy,
that's
occurred in most investigations, back even in the Watergate days,
people said, "follow the money." And that's correct. In this case,
you've got to follow the money. Who saves money by using these toxic
dispersants? Well, it's BP. But then the next question--I've only seen
one article that describes it--who owns BP? And I think when you look
and
see who owns BP, you find that it's the majority ownership, a billion
shares, is a company called BlackRock that was created, owned and run by
a gentleman named Larry Fink. And Vanity Fair just did recently
an article about Mr. Fink and his connections with Mr. Geithner, Mr.
Summers and others in the administration. So I think what's needed, we
now know that there's a cover-up. Dispersants are being used. Congress,
at least three Congress folks--Congressman Markey, Congressman Nadler
and
Senator Mikulski--are on the case. And I think the media now has to
follow the money, just as they did in Watergate, and tell the American
people who's getting money for poisoning the millions of people in the
Gulf.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Hugh Kaufman, who works
at
the Environmental Protection Agency. This is an issue we've brought up
before, but it's an absolutely critical one, the issue of proprietary
information of these companies, in particular, the ingredients of
Corexit, even though 1.8 million pounds of it have been dumped into the
Gulf. What's in Corexit? Do you know? What is EPA allowed to know, and
what is the company allowed to keep private?
HUGH KAUFMAN: EPA has all the information on what's
in--the
ingredients are. The largest ingredient in Corexit is oil. But there
are other materials. And when the ingredients are mixed with oil, the
combination of Corexit or any dispersant and oil is more toxic than the
oil itself. But EPA has all that information. That's a red herring issue
being raised, that we have to somehow know more information. When you
look at the label and you look at the toxicity sheets that come with it,
the public knows enough to know that it's very dangerous. The National
Academy of Science has done work on it. Toxicologists from Exxon that
developed it have published on it. So, we know enough to know that it's
very dangerous, and to say that we just have to know more about it is a
red herring issue. We know plenty. It's very dangerous. And in fact,
Congressman Nadler and Senator Lautenberg are working on legislation to
ban it.
AMY GOODMAN: And I should correct myself: 1.8 million
gallons, I think it is, of Corexit that's been dumped. Sharif?
SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: And Hugh Kaufman--
HUGH KAUFMAN: Tha's correct, almost two million
gallons
of--yes, sir.
SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: So the--
HUGH KAUFMAN: I'm sorry, I'm not--
SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: No, no, go ahead. The
dispersant
is--
HUGH KAUFMAN: I'm not hearing you, sir.
SHARIF ADBEL KOUDDOUS: These nearly two million
gallons
have been dispersed not only on the surface of the water, but also 5,000
feet below the water, as well. Can you talk about that?
HUGH KAUFMAN: Well, not only do you have airplanes
flying
and dropping them on the Gulf region, like Agent Orange in Vietnam, but a
large amount of it is being shot into the water column at 5,000 feet to
disperse the oil as it gushers out. And so, you have spread, according
to the Associated Press, over perhaps over 44,000 square miles, an oil
and dispersant mix. And what's happened is, that makes it impossible to
skim the oil out of the water. One of the things that happened is they
brought this big boat, Whale, in from Japan to get rid of the
oil, and it didn't work because the majority of the oil is spread
throughout the water column over thousands of square miles in the Gulf.
And so--and there's been a lot of work to show the dispersants, which is
true, make it more difficult to clean up the mess than if you didn't use
them. The sole purpose in the Gulf for dispersants is to keep a
cover-up going for BP to try to hide the volume of oil that has been
released and save them hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars
of fines. That's the purpose of using the dispersants, not to protect
the public health or environment. Quite the opposite.
AMY GOODMAN: You've made comparisons between Corexit,
the
use of Corexit and hiding BP's liability, and what happened at Ground
Zero after the attacks of September 11th, Hugh Kaufman.
HUGH KAUFMAN: Yeah, I was one of the people who--well,
I
did. I did the ombudsman investigation on Ground Zero, where EPA made
false statements about the safety of the air, which has since, of
course, been proven to be false. Consequently, you have the heroes, the
workers there, a large percentage of them are sick right now, not even
ten years later, and most of them will die early because of respitory
problems, cancer, etc., because of EPA's false statements.
And you've got the same thing going on in the Gulf, EPA
administrators saying the same thing, that the air is safe and the water
is safe. And the administrator misled Senator Mikulski on that issue in
the hearings you talked about. And basically, the problem is
dispersants mixed with oil and air pollution. EPA, like in 9/11--I did
that investigation nine years ago--was not doing adequate and proper
testing. Same thing with OSHA with the workers, they're using mostly
BP's contractor. And BP's contractor for doing air testing is the
company that's used by companies to prove they don't have a problem. If
you remember the wallboard pollution problem from China, the wallboard
from China, this company does that environmental monitoring. It's a
massive cover-up. And so far, luckily, we have two members of Congress
and one member of the Senate on the case. Hopefully more will join in.
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