Some House members left this morning's inaugural meeting of the House Select Committee on the Gulf Coast Disaster without knowing the potential risk of dispersants that British Petroleum is using to break up and sink millions of gallons of oil bursting from a destroyed deepwater oil well off the coast of Louisiana.
Frances Fredericks, D-Gulfport, chairman of the House Marine Resources Committee, said Gov. Haley Barbour, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality gave her no straight answers on the potential long-term toxicity of the dispersant Corexit, which BP has used more than 1,021,000 gallons on the ocean's surface and injected directly in to the erupting well for weeks.
"One of my chief concerns is the safety of the food we consume after they have put all of these dispersants into the water, and so far I'm getting answers, but I'm not truly being told that it's no danger," Fredericks told reporters. "I'm being told that it's not in Mississippi waters yet and we don't know if it will ever get to Mississippi waters, but there's no barrier out there to separate one water from the other water. And I am truly concerned about the possibility of something contaminating the food we consume."
Barbour addressed the committee this morning, downplaying the potential problems of using the dispersant, which increases in toxicity when mixed with oil, according to EPA tests on the chemical.
Barbour said some of Corexit inside the dispersant can be found in most households, but Fredericks countered, saying she doesn't drink many of the chemicals stored in her house for a reason.
"Even some household chemicals are dangerous if you ingest them. I want to know what household chemicals you're talking about," Fredericks said. "We have a right to know that before we allow our children or ourselves to ingest those items. But we just don't know."
Rep. Steven Palazzo, R-Biloxi, said he was concerned about children exposed to the chemicals by swimming in the water or consuming seafood taken from dispersant-saturated water.
"Everybody keeps saying its safe, and it's made of common household items, but there seems to be a secret nature about it," he said. "I would like to know if should this dispersant make it into the food chain, will we and our children be safe?"
Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Executive Director Mike Womack said the Environmental Protection Agency and MEMA is "taking many precautionary measures," to detect the chemical in state waters.
"But will it make you sick if you ingest it or get it on your skin?" Palazzo, who is running for U.S. Congress, pressed.
"Drink it out of the barrel and it'll make you very sick, but right now, going out in to water, it's not going to make you sick," Womack said, adding that he had upcoming plans to travel to the coast, catch some shrimp and "bring them back to eat."
After the hearing, Womack told the Jackson Free Press that he trusted MDEQ and the Mississippi Department of Health to make an honest call on the safety of Mississippi Gulf waters.
"I don't think they would mislead us if they felt it was unsafe. I've driven the beaches," Womak said. "It appears to me, by all scientific standards, to be safe on the coast. I've got friends in the agencies responsible for monitoring this and they're not going to mislead the public. They want to do the right thing, and the right thing now is to continue to enjoy the water and the seafood, and if there comes a time when we have an impact and we have to close our beaches, folks will be told. But right now, it's safe."
Despite Womack's testimony, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency has banned fishing from federal waters less than 30 miles from the Mississippi coast. Womack said state waters north of the federal zone are extremely shallow and easily monitored for toxins and oil by the MDEQ.
Last week, however, a strand of oil that was two miles long washed up on Mississippi's Petit Bois Island. Barbour claimed the oil escaped detection because it was floating a couple of feet below the surface, according to the Sun Herald.
Joe Marcus Wyatt, an environmental engineer of MDEQ's office of pollution control, deferred questions pertaining to the toxic characteristics of Corexit to BP representatives, who did not appear before the Tuesday hearing but would be present at the Wednesday hearing.
Fredericks displayed alarm at MDEQ officials' inability to offer specifics on the chemical, however: "That's another concern," Fredericks said. "Why are we depending on BP to give us the answer to the safety of these products? We need to know the safety of it ourselves so we can limit the use of it if we need to."
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