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Vicki B. Escarra, President and CEO of Feeding America, wrote, "Alongside natural disaster, a very real human disaster looms. The recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has wrought havoc on sea and on land. But attention is now turning to the long-term effects the disaster will have on the coastlines, on businesses, and on American men, women and children. The immediate effects of the oil spill are obvious. Others, such as its effects on American families, will be hard to measure and will take years to document."
There are effects from the oil spill that you can see, like oil washing ashore, and those that you can't, like when oil compounds break down and go airborne. What is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico is truly a nightmare of epic proportions. And it's going to be a health disaster whose dimensions are growing exponentially behind curtains erected by the federal government. Few people are grasping the magnitude of the Gulf oil tragedy, not grasping the grave consequences for many millions of people and eventually the entire world. It is going to affect not only the livelihoods and employment of locals but will also contribute to the health failure of millions of people. It is so profoundly sad - like watching a loved one with a gunshot to the belly witnessing the blood coming out, but in this case it's the planet belching up black blood and poison gas in huge and very possibly unending quantities.
There's an old adage about not seeing the forest for the trees. It means getting wrapped up in the details of a circumstance and losing appreciation for the big picture. Sometimes we need to step back and look at things from a different perspective. Consider the extraordinary situation in the Gulf. Not that much news coming out of there, no mention of deadly threats but we do know who went to the yacht races last weekend. Life seems almost normal on the front page of the Times or in Yahoo or Google News. Things are stabilizing at the king of pop's mansion, and Obama is personally meeting with a young gay girl who was given a hard time with her prom.
While the situation in the Gulf is grim it will soon get a lot grimmer. There are certain chemicals mixed in with the oil that release toxic gases, finding a way to make it up into the air. Many different gases from hydrogen sulfate to benzene are being released into the air at around 4000 times what it considered safe to humans. As a result of this people are going to become gravely ill. People are going to be poisoned and unfortunately some are going to die. We have already seen breathing problems in the Gulf region and now reports are coming in as far away as Atlanta, Georgia.
Comment: For more information about the possible link between sunscreen and cancer read the following articles:
Study: Many Sunscreens May Be Accelerating Cancer
More Bad News About Sunscreens: Nanoparticles
Senator asks FDA to Share Data on Possible Sunscreen Chemical-Cancer Link
Study will address sunscreen's possible link to Alzheimer's