EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson (who should have been fired already) tweeted a link to USA Today’s “article” on the EPA dispersant “studies”. Essentially, USA Today published a carefully worded press release on behalf of the EPA, making it look as though it is reporting real news. Please take note: this is little more than another PR stunt from EPA, which apparently cares more about protecting its image than the environment or public health.

The careless and haphazard title which author Elizabeth Weise assigned to the story? “Dispersants don’t SEEM to disrupt marine life.” If you’ll excuse me for one moment here, I’m going to have to call BULLSH*T.

First, as outlined by Dr. Chris Pincetich, the EPA study cutoff values are 96 hours. This means if an organism has a heart rate of 1 beat/minute at hour 96, it is considered to have “no effect”, even if it dies at hour 97. In one test… the pesticides that killed no fish at 96 hours (the EPA deadline), had killed 90% of those fish two weeks later.

Next, as I have already submitted to the EPA many times, this review of 450 scientific articles spanning 11 years, studying dispersant use in oil spills disagrees with EPA’s pathetic attempt at 4 weeks worth of (time-buying) studies. The data has BEEN here all along.

Finally, EPA’s own internal whistleblower tells the public that EPA is in the midst of a massive cover up, lying and misleading about dispersant data from day one. I am most disappointed that any respected publication would give credence to this PR attempt from the EPA without doing more research on the matter, but not nearly as disappointed as I am to know how my tax dollars are being wasted on federal agencies that are NOT doing their jobs!