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It's strange how things converge in our lives. If you had asked me a month ago, I would have said I don't work on petroleum-related issues. Of course that wasn't technically true, since most of the pesticides and industrial chemicals that I'm working to eliminate are derived from petroleum. But aside from seeing the occasional hydrocarbon-exposed patient, I never worked on the health effects of the nasty gunk itself. That sure has changed fast!
It started with a colleague asking me to investigate the high rates of cancer in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta - a Canadian First Nations community living downstream from the largest tar sands mining operation in the world. Later today I'll be flying up to Fort Chipewyan for a meeting of the community and scientists to discuss the high rates of cancer and the potential links to the tar sands. More on that soon.
But then the oil bubbling up under the Gulf of Mexico moved toward shore, and people started complaining of health problems. My plans changed fast. Now I'll be traveling from Canada to the Gulf Coast to see the two faces of petroleum's toxicity in one week.
As I pack my suitcase today with fleece and long underwear for the cold of Canada, and lightweight shirts for the heat and humidity of the Gulf, I marvel about the long reach of petroleum into people's lives. It's not usually something we think about at the gas pump.
The tar sands mining has been causing a slow-motion ecological disaster in Canada for years, with discharges of petroleum pollution into the rivers, and evidence of contamination in the fish and waterfowl that people in the North depend upon for their livelihood. Long-term exposure to various petroleum hydrocarbons has been linked to cancer. The community of Fort Chipewyan is suffering from high rates of cancer.
The oil spill is causing a rapidly-unfolding ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, with massive releases of petroleum pollution into the estuaries and contamination of the oysters, shrimp, and fish that people on the Gulf Coast depend on for their livelihood. As I wrote yesterday, acute exposure to various petroleum hydrocarbons can cause headaches, dizziness, nausea, cough, and difficulty breathing. People in Louisiana's Gulf Coast are complaining of all these symptoms.
Does it have to be this way?
Maybe these twin disasters are a signal to all of us that it's time to break our addiction to oil and move to clean energy choices. After all, energy conservation, wind, and solar won't kill you.
For more on why tar sands are a terrible idea, check out my colleague Liz Barratt-Brown's blog. Also read here about how the European Union is rejecting tar sands.
This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard.
Gina Solomon is a Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. NRDC is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the environment, people and animals. NRDC was founded in 1970 and is comprised of more than 300 lawyers, scientists and policy experts, with more than one million members and e-activists.
