What You Can Do

Contact your local and state officials, as well as the EPA and the White House. Right now the American people are asking a lot of critical questions and not getting answers. We must keep asking these questions until we get not only answers, but good answers. Please reach out to your own governors, senators and congressional representatives. Continue doing so until “we the people” have answers and have been heard.

Our calls to the EPA have all resulted in the same message – you need to talk to Lisa Jackson (Administrator of EPA). We’ve left messages and haven’t heard back from her. Here is all the contact we have (please send the message – we need massive amounts of people standing together, demanding more):

Lisa Jackson: 202-564-4700
twitter.com/lisapjackson
http://www.facebook.com/lisapjackson
twitter.com/EPAgov

Here is our open message to the EPA:

Dear EPA/Lisa Jackson,

We have a lot of information about the two forms of Corexit being used by BP in our Gulf of Mexico. All of the information we have points to the highly toxic nature of this dangerous chemical.

Here are a few things we know:

1. Corexit is a chemical banned in many in countries, including BP’s own home of Britain (banned 10 years ago).
2. Numerous reports exist on the long term negative health effects of Corexit on clean up workers following Exxon Valdez.
3. According to BP’s own Oil Spill Contingency Plan, there are at least 12 other dispersants considered both more effective and many less toxic than Corexit.
4. A month ago BP purchased hundreds of thousands of gallons of Dispersit, a dispersant believed to be 100% effective on Louisiana crude and 1/3 as toxic as Corexit, and left that product sitting in a field in Houston.
5. The two forms of Corexit in use by BP are listed as being only 31% and 46% effective on Louisiana crude.
6. BP has blatantly announced that Corexit is the only dispersant they will consider using in our own Gulf of Mexico.
7. The amount of Corexit and the depth at which it is in use is unprecedented, a giant BP science experiment, in our back yards, at a very heavy price to our citizens.
8. Three weeks ago the EPA, in a move to protect our citizens, told BP to find an alternative to Corexit, something BP essentially laughed off after a half-hearted handful of phone calls.
9. Corexit causes the oil to disperse, the benefits of which can be argued, but no one argues the price our fragile Gulf ecosystem pays for that gamble.
10. Corexit destroys marine life by rupturing red blood cells, causing them to die a slow, painful death from internal bleeding.
11. By dispersing the oil with Corexit, the oil and Corexit enter our entire water column, where they poison life from the bottom and on up the food chain, of which we sit atop.
12. Already, oxygen levels off the Alabama shelf have dropped to less than 20% of their normal levels, too low to sustain any plant or animal life which requires oxygen to survive, something scientists attribute to the Corexit beneath the surface.
13. A lot of catastrophic information exists about Corexit, which is being dumped and injected at the well head in the millions of gallons.
14. BP is using DC-10′s to drop aerially and putting it directly into the source at the well head.
15. BP has even run night ops, dropping Corexit over residential Barataria Bay, without warning.
16. Allowing this use of Corexit may be in direct violation of federal law.
17. But we know something much worse – it may kill us.
18. Corexit use will wipe out massive amounts of sea life (some experts say it already has), possibly entire species, and we know that it isn’t confined to the water.
19. Corexit will be pulled from the Gulf and deposited on our lands, our houses, in our water supplies in coming months as thunder storms and hurricanes move through the area.

What we don’t know:

1. Why the EPA allows this to continue. In the first 30 days, considering Corexit a trade off to keep the oil offshore might have made sense. But the oil is on shore, it’s in the marshes, it’s too late. Our focus should be there.  There no longer remains a case for continuing to poison our waters.
2. The American people are left without answers, feeling very afraid and uncertain who is in charge, let alone who is left to protect us from BP.
3. Why, in three weeks, the EPA hasn’t identified one or more less toxic, more effective solutions (already outlined on BP’s plan) and ordered BP to use those solutions.
4. Why the use of dispersants is considered worth it at all anymore.

We have tremendous technology, in terms of bioremediation agents, which are both proven and highly effective at safely cleaning the marshes and our shores. We do NOT have to fight toxins with toxins. We know that oil is of the Earth and Earth has a fantastic way of healing itself. Will you please stand with us, stand FOR us, to promote Earth’s natural ability to heal, using safe, non-toxic remedies? All of the solution does NOT have to come from one company. Let us secure all of the bioremediation products from all US manufacturers and begin to employ these methods. Our citizens should not be left paying the price for BP’s mess with cancer, leukemia, chronic respiratory illness and other results of massive amounts of neurotoxin exposure.

At the very least the public deserves answers. Please talk to us. Please work with us. Please fulfill your position as protectors of our environment. The entire ecosystem of our Gulf depends on it. Our lives depend on it.

Thank you,
Jennifer McClurg Roth