Tag Archives: oil

Seafood safety: It’s easy to manufacture fear, hard to manufacture test results

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The Ragin’ Cajun, politico-type James Carville, once said, “It’s easy to manufacture fear. It’s hard to manufacture test results.”

So while some 300,000 seafood samples from the Gulf of Mexico have been tested by U.S. Food and Drug Administration and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration labs – with almost every sample showing no trace of oil or dispersant – some individuals claim that “independent” tests reveal toxins in the local catch.

Don Kraemer,FDA’s deputy director in the Office of Food Safety, says the agency has been surprised by the number of media stories that give credibility to “junk science” and questionable lab tests.

“We‘ve learned some things through this process about public messaging, there were some environmental groups that we didn’t cater to, with our communications, and in retrospect, maybe we should have.

“We’re working now to address independent reports that aren’t scientifically sound. And we’ll continue to test seafood in the Gulf to demonstrate its safety.

“Oil spills have been around for a long time, so we know which markers are the right ones to test for to determine whether toxins are present. In this case, we knew which PAHs would be good markers and would clearly tell us whether oil was present.”

Skimmed oil, anyone?

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A friend of mine works for a company in charge of collecting waste oil from restaurants to later turn it into fuel. They also pick up road kill from I-70. It’s a dirty job, but I’m glad somebody is doing it.

The Chinese have taken recycling to a whole new level. The waste oil is “skimmed from kitchen waste” and resold in the black market. The yuck factor is enough reason in itself to blog about, but the practice is also a dangerous one:

“Reused cooking oil would likely contain acrylamide, a chemical that forms naturally when starchy foods are baked or fried. Studies have shown the chemical, which also has industrial uses, causes cancer in lab animals and nerve damage to workers who are exposed to high levels.”

Chinese officials say they are stepping up their efforts to combat this and other food safety issues.
 

BP CEO attributes oil spill cleanup workers’ illness to food poisoning, says he wants his life back

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BP is making Exxon look good.

I know a lot of people who have to make everything about them, but this seems extreme.

In some of the worst risk communication ever, and which will surely be documented in some crisis book thingy or Powerpoint top-10 slides for decades, BP CEO Tony Hayward demonstrated an ability to make the Gulf of Mexico oil somehow about him.

“I want my life back,” video clip is below. So is the one of Hayward impersonating Napolean’s food safety guru.

Hayward also said on May 31, 2010 that workers were not getting sick because of the toxicity of the oil and BP’s dispersants, they have simply gotten food poisoning.

“I’m sure they were genuinely ill, but whether it had anything to do with dispersants and oil, whether it was food poisoning, or some other reason for them being ill. You know, there’s a– food poisoning is a really big issue when you’ve got a concentration of this many people in ten pre-cabs, ten pre-accommodations. It’s something we have to be very, very mindful of. It’s one of the big issues of keeping the army operating. Armies march on their stomachs.”