After you read that, if you haven't already, please watch Dr. Scott Milroy's presentation I posted in the previous post:
Take into consideration what Dr. Milroy is suggesting:
The FDA is not only allowing PAH levels 100 to 10,000 times higher than normally considered safe....in fact, the FDA guidelines for testing are inadequate to begin with. From not testing the entire organism's body to grossly underestimating the amounts of seafood consumed by the average seafood eater...we should be very concerned about FDA guidelines for Gulf seafood.
Milroy's findings estimated that your true risk may be 12.3 times higher than what the FDA testing controls assume.
I can't help but once again point out the irony in Sen. Vitter and Sen. Landrieu's letter to the FDA:
"Unfortunately, many consumers still believe that Gulf seafood is unsafe, in part because some groups continue to spread misinformation and unscientific claims that deny what this testing has proven."
Unfortunately, the organization Sen. Landrieu and Sen. Vitter are writing to may be spreading misinformation based on flawed scientific studies.
From the Alternet report:
Robert Dickey, director of the FDA's Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory, who's taken the lead for the agency in responding to the NRDC report, elaborated in an email to AlterNet, "Overly conservative estimates would lead you [to] remove a great deal of food from our refrigerators and pantries than is needed."
In an interview with AlterNet, the study's lead researcher, NRDC staff scientist Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, said that such a response from the FDA "begs the question of whether or not it was a political versus a scientific decision" because the agency "does not provide scientific evidence" for the claim that being more health protective somehow carries an increased risk of doing harm.
She added, "PAHs in food have been evaluated and standards set in the European Union without jeopardizing anyone's nutrition."
AlterNet confirmed that the FDA indeed has provided no scientific evidence to back up this claim in either its formal response to the NRDC report or in addressing AlterNet's questions.
So the FDA's primary concern is about empty refrigerators and pantries? Even if they are stocking them with potentially carcinogenic food stuff?
Folks, look, we have a serious, long-term problem in the Gulf. We need to face it. We must resist the desire to ignore the facts these independent scientists are finding and push back against the enormous pressure by government and corporate officials to sweep the problem under the rug. Instead of spending boatloads of cash on propaganda/marketing campaigns to convince the rest of the country that "everything is just peachy", perhaps we should face the facts and pressure our politicians to do what they promised to do at the beginning of this crisis....make BP accountable for their actions.
What is that going to take?
It's going to take BP subsidizing the entire seafood industry over a decade or more. That is the reality but apparently our elected officials don't have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to their corporate masters and fight for their constituents. They would rather stick their heads in the sand of our oil/dispersant covered beaches and pretend everything is OK while their silk pockets and purses are being stuffed by the culprits. The end result will be a decimated seafood industry and the loss of a culture which has come to define who we are as South Louisianans.
The senators' current actions will have the exact opposite effect of what they are supposedly struggling to save.
The truth always has a way of getting out, regardless of the propaganda. If we continue to parrot, "Everything is great!!!", that message will inevitably come back to haunt us. When we finally can determine our seafood is safe and the species populations have rebounded, no one will believe a word we say.
If our senators really want to help this industry...one day...come back, they should stop providing the fodder for BP to mitigate its risk.
The name of the game is plausible deniability.
BP will spend a wheelbarrow of money today in order to avoid spending the dump trucks full of cash they would have to spend tomorrow to convince us we're not sick because of their folly.
They will do this even if it means increasing the health risks to the multitude of people living along the Gulf Coast of the United States of America.
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