Plan to burn excess oil from BP well raises health questions

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Plans to burn hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil from BP's blown-out well are raising new questions about the health and safety of the thousands of workers on rigs and vessels near the spill site.

BP and the federal government are in new territory once again in dealing with the nation's worst environmental disaster: There's never been such a huge flaring of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or possibly anywhere.

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Dr. Phil Harber, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the burning oil could expose workers to toxins that might cause severe respiratory irritation, asthma attacks and inflamed airways depending on how the burns are handled. Burning oil is a fairly common method of relieving pressure in refinery operations, he said.

"But the magnitude is a concern," said Harber, who's also the chief of UCLA's division of occupational and environmental medicine.

The other worry, he said, is if the wind carries off the thick clouds, "there are hundreds of ships in the area, and those workers could have significant exposures and perhaps less protection because the exposures would be unanticipated," he said.

Harmful byproducts of burning the light crude flowing into the Gulf include fine particles; toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which result from the incomplete burning of carbon-containing materials such as oil; and volatile organic compounds such as benzene toluene, ethylbenzene, and xyle



Read more: Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/11/95781/plan-to-burn-excess-oil-from-bp.html#ixzz0qbQSJYEu

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I did notice how Schlumberger wasn't defending how cleanly their Evergreen burner burned in the article, only that "excess oil and gas had been being burned off around the world for the past 40 years."

I guess they need to pick days when the wind is blowing toward Houston. The pollutants will get lost in the vast cloud of toxins that now passes for Texas' air, and no one will even notice.

we've already screwed the water in the gulf, lets see how bad we can fuck up the atmosphere too !!!:sarcasm:
(edit for my speling) D'oh !!!

But, you'd almost think that was going through some deranged BP executives head.

And, I only live three miles from the gulf. Some of that shit has to be heading my way soon. I remember the wild fires up in Georgia a few years ago. Over 300 miles away, in the Clearwater FL area, and I could walk outside and my eyes would be watering. When we got our first rain, the bottom of my pool was coated with ash and soot that had gathered on top of the pool cage.

And welcome to DU!

:hi:

the smoke came all the way down here... first through and then south of Philly, some 600 miles away from the burning forests. The sky was a hazy orange and you could smell the smoke very clearly as if it were nearby. I had even taken pictures of the obscured sun, it was that bizarre. I can understand what burning crude could do to anyone in your area - especially with my being in a city with or near the largest set of oil refineries on the east coast (2 of which experienced an armageddon-like period where there were several 6 - 10 alarmers over a 6-month period in 1975 - i.e., Gulf & ARCO refineries, both of which were eventually purchased by others like Sunoco).

Good luck to you folks!

Seriously. Getting the oil off their backs at the cost of workers' health? Like Aziz Ansari sang on the MTV Movie Awards earlier this week: "F--- you BP!"

It's only an excess if you're recovering some of it to sell, isn't it?

Do we know what this "light crude" actually consists of yet?

I'm glad no-one's discussing plans to nuke it. That is one of the most ridiculous and irresponsible ideas I've ever heard.

We use far too much oil and natural gas in this country. This is totally predictable. We've fucked ourselves.