I sent out press releases about the new video "Survive the Blowout." I uploaded it to YouTube, sent out messages to a few hundred Facebook fans. The reaction is mostly a non reaction. I think people can't believe that there is any problem with the gases, even though EPA is gathering data of 100 times accepted limits for human health for Hydrogen Sulfide H2S on May 3. Data were collected at Venice, a small town on the Gulf coast, approximately 50 miles away from the blowout. How did that gas get there? Why isn't that the lead story on CNN, FOX, etc? Lead story for them is that the oil blob is looking "blacker". Blacker? Because that is what TV cameras can "see".
Remember this phrase: What you can't see, is worse than what you can see. What you can't smell is worse than what you can smell.
Dig this. H2S, as we all know, smells like "rotten eggs", which is a good thing, because H2S is a very deadly gas. Here is the problem, at the levels we can smell it, it is not going to kill anyone. But, as the levels of H2S rise in parts per million, it reaches a level where is numbs, deactivates the olfactory nerves, preventing humans from smelling it. As levels continue to rise, the higher levels are undetected by the impaired olfactory nerves, and can reach a level, where the gas shuts down the human physiological systems (combo of lungs, heart) and causes loss of consciousness and can cause death.
NOTE: Natural gas is odorless. Gas companies ADD odor to it in the industrial process, in order to make it detectable by human olfactory glands. Natural gas coming out of the BP blowout has no perfume added.
I sent press releases to every large metro daily newspaper from Corpus Christi around the northern Gulf to the Keys. I'll let you know tomorrow, if any of them call, print, email or post anything. It will be interesting to see if the big DENIAL mechanism is at work here!
The levels of VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) detected by EPA at the Venice site show 4,516 ppb on May 2, where the expected standard is 3.7 (benzene) to 61.25 methylene chloride. That is an increase of a factor of 1,000. THREE WEEKS AGO. There are no published readings since that date. WHY? Where are the environmentalists? Why aren't they all over this? It might reflect badly on their man in the WH? I don't know.
BP can cap the blowout tomorrow, but the gases will continue to come out of the water for some incalculable period of time. The crude and natural gas are made up of hundreds and hundreds of chemicals, atoms (mercury, for example). The compounds are in a dance, where the dancers are constantly changing from gases to liquids to solids and back and forth, changing with temperature, changing with pressure. One's boiling temperature is the other's liquifying temperature. If you could follow one molecule or compound up out of the hole, it might rise through the 5000 feet of water as a liquid and pop out of the sea as a gas, float over to the coast, liquify or solidify, heat up again and float off as a gas. The word "gas" comes from the Greek word "chaos." The constant interchange among the gas, liquid and solid states is the real "chaos." The dance goes on with big changes during the course of a day. The sun heats up the solid tar ball on a beach and out pops a gas. The sun sets, the gas cools and floats up the skeptic's nose.
I hear some try to refute the concern about gas as a problem, but simply noting that the gases "dissipate." What a convenient word. What a denial word. Dissipate? To where? Into a baby's lungs? No more gases. They are all gone now. Where are they? Oh, the babies are carrying them around in their lungs. Hydrogen Sulfide, benzene and others that are much worse. Dissipated for how long? A gas can dissipate for a few minutes or days and reappear as a liquid or solid. So, what does the skeptic call this reappearance of the "dissipated" gas?
Contained Crude vs. Uncaged Commandos
How do we help people understand that the magnitude of this problem is so huge, because this giant monster is uncaged, open, freely morphing its way around the circulations of the Gulf currents and the overhead wind currents. The nasty, poisonous, toxic, killer chemicals in crude have been set free from their cauldron beneath the floor of the Gulf. They are not in an enclosed tank, not in a supertanker, not in a refinery, not in a tanker truck, not in a tank beneath the gas station, not in a can at the hardware store. The gases and chemicals have not gone through a refining process that strips out the worst of the worst, burns off the killers, remixed some with others to make marketable products that are in our clothes and in our foods, in our ice cream and in our cosmetics and lotions.
No, these chemicals have come directly up the ladder from hell. They haven't been screened, passed through EMA inspections. Some of them are the raw engines of power that cause cancer, deformities, brain damage. These devils from beneath of Gulf floor are now loose on the planet. They are free to fly up human noses, crawl down human throats, penetrate human skin. They are free to land with the force of an invading army upon the open water reservoirs of any municipality they fly over. We fret over terrorists dropping kool aid in our water supplies. This army of cancer causing chemicals now has open access to the fly ways over the precious drinking water stored by cities along the coast beneath the clouds where this enemy "dissipates."
Every day that the blowout is not plugged, is another day that a truck load or a tanker load of these commandos, all designated by some rank of H2S, CO, CO2, H this and H that, enter the borders of the United States. They will be flying into Mexico and Cuba next, riding on a sea breeze or surfing on a wave. Like the volcanic ash carried by the winds from Iceland across Europe, the western breezes will float the little intruders into other lands, where they will be as unwelcome, yet as unstoppable as here.
The administration, the oil companies and the media seem to want to keep the focus of discussion on the engineering problem of plugging the hole. But, really, it is a focus that none of us can do anything about. A handful of government people and engineers have to do whatever they can. There is no value in 300,000,000 Americans following the progress of that problem on a minute to minute, day to day basis. All we can do is which them luck. By focusing on the plug problem, we are treating it like a Superbowl to see which side wins. The problem is that while, we are sitting in front of our TV's and clicking on our websites to see who is winning, we are distracted from the real problem that is swirling around outside our homes, our offices, our personal consciousness. What's that? A threat to our lives. A threat to the lives of those who are most immediately near the source of the largest, cancer causing monster allowed to escape out of the depths of the earth. Almost everyone in other states not near the Gulf has friends and relatives in the immediately affected states. The impact to the economy will be felt by all.
The threat is real. Every minute lost, watching the administration hold its foot on the throat of BP, is a minute that can be used to save another life, educate another person about how to prepare, how to respond and how to survive. The encroachment of the monster into our lives is going to get worse with each passing day. It may be many months before someone can tell us that things are getting better, that we have pushed the monster back into its hole, we have washed it out or our seas and we have scrubbed it out of our air. As the brown entrails of the monster round the Florida Keys and ride the currents up and around the Atlantic, as the darkening blob grows on the floor of the Gulf, as the noxious, nomad molecules dissipate over our water supplies, our farm land and over our homes, we are challenged with the task of mobilizing our lives, rearranging our priorities and reaching out to our loved ones and neighbors to take on this beast, to respond to its challenge and to participate in its defeat. Our quality of life is at stake. The very foundations of our life are in jeopardy. Our food. Our water. Our air. We don't have time to be mislead by a media madness focused on a political joust. We are called to respond to a higher value, one based on our own sense of personal responsibility to look out for and care for our own well being and the well being of those we hold dear, those we call neighbors and friends, and those we meet on the road, who may be from different states or other countries. The monster knows no boundaries in its attack on our lives. We must know no boundaries in our efforts to find common ground, build new bridges, rearrange old behaviors and arrive at innovative solutions in mustering forces we only now may discover to respond to the challenge with courage, compassion, ingenuity and commitment to assure our health, safety and final victory over the monster from hell.
Paul Revere warned of the first British invasion with "One if by land. Two if by sea." The new warning goes up with "One if by land. Two if by sea. Three if by air.
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