Is There Crude in my Seafood? Smell it. Yeah, Right!
I will get back to the Corexit MSDS sheet; I do visit Corexit a bit at the end of this post. This blog has been a little silent because I have been writing grants and trying to get some manuscripts off my desk. I have a pretty exciting manuscript that we have recently finished. I’ll let you know when it gets through peer review.
Today I want to write a little bit about seafood and our dear fishers and shrimpers who are suffering because of the drilling disaster that stole their livelihood. I want to discuss the smell test and explain my experiences of being in an oiled marsh.
Last Friday, I was in a marsh that was oiled when hurricane Alex came through the Gulf in June 2010. This marsh had a film of oil on top of the water. I took a sample of the oil for analysis and took some photos. I also dipped my hand into the water and the smelled the oil on my fingertips.
Crude on my fingers. I am in a marsh on the Northern Gulf of Mexico Oct 2010.
Before I tell you what happened next, I want to tell you some things about me. My students and other people who know me say I have the nose of a bloodhound. If someone has leather shoes on their feet, I can smell the leather from roughly five feet away. I can identify ants by squishing them and smelling one of them. With the oil on my fingertips, I couldn’t smell it. Yes, you read that correctly. I absolutely positively could not smell it.
This immediately brought to mind the seafood smell test as shown in the attached video. Surely, each one of those hapless souls who conduct the test does not have the capability of detecting odor as I do. Yet, consumers are supposed to rely on their ability to smell a minute amount of oil in the tissues of a fish, shrimp or crab. How you ever smelled fresh, raw seafood? The odor can be distinct. To be able to detect fresh crude, I concede that the smell test might be valid. But I am here to tell you that I wouldn’t trust the smell test enough to eat the seafood right now.
I won’t eat seafood right now. At least, I won’t eat any species that potentially might live in the Gulf. I get a lot of grief from my colleagues and friends about this decision until I say these words, “I am not about to gamble my short- and long-term health on the livelihood of my fellow man.” That usually shuts them up.
I spoke to a shrimper friend the other day. He won’t shrimp because there are so few shrimp out there and doesn’t want to take the risk of damaging the industry with tainted seafood. He’s losing his livelihood. Geez, if you told me I couldn’t write or be a professor anymore, I don’t know what I would do.
BP needs to rescue the shrimpers and fishers from financial ruin. They need to do it more quickly and completely than their claims process currently allows. If someone wants to be retrained, BP should facilitate it and pay for it. If someone needs to be relocated, BP should foot the bill. BP promised to make it right, and they are falling far short of the mark. If BP put the money they are spending on PR into the livelihoods and health of the people of the Gulf Coast, they’d be in better shape than they are right now.
Instead, we are being lied to. We are lied to by BP. We are lied to by NOAA. We are lied to by the FDA and the EPA. We are promised that our seafood is safe. Yet no one is testing for the presence of Corexit. We are being promised that crude oil is detectable in seafood by smell. I’m telling you from my experience in the marsh last Friday, that it is not.
Edited 31 October 2010: Mac Mackenzie has some shrimp tested. The results are here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/40518642/Gulf-Shrimp-Lab-Testing-Digestive-Tracts
My take: I wouldn’t eat them.
Thank You Linda, for bringing up the smell test, and I would be inclined to trust your sensory input and analysis over anything the Government or BP puts forth…
But the economic impact, as a result of this massive crime, underscores the fact that this Administration, and the agencies under it, should have seized all of BP’s assets at the outset. As it is now, that corporation is a busy little bee ~ hiding, and selling off, and parting out the corporate entity, to protect it from what is sure to come. I foresee that the court system on the Gulf Coast, particularly Louisiana, will become a booming enterprise and growth industry.
Most of us thought this “test” was BS too. Seafood already has a pretty strong odor with the brine and the unique smell of fish and fishy things. Quite strong depending on how long it has sat and in what. And then often when it is processed it is washed and then frozen. How often do we loose odors of Chemicals when they are frozen? I wonder about that. Or weaken those odors and then they are masked by washing as well and natural odors?
I too have a very sensitive nose. And I don’t believe I could smell PAHs. Things that are known to accumulate in crustaceans and mussels specifically. At least according to the US Government Doc they do:
http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/book_shelf/963_seafood2.pdf Here are the two quotes that stand out to me:
“Oil stranded on shorelines adjacent to a fishery can be a source of chronic contamination, particularly where shoreline cleanup is not effective or not attempted due to concerns of causing greater harm to the oiled habitat. Even the most effective shoreline cleanups rarely remove all of the stranded oil. Remaining oil is removed or degraded by natural processes. Natural removal processes usually include physical breakup and dispersal of persistent oil residues over a period of months to years (Shigenaka 1997; Hayes and Michel 1999). This remobilized oil, either as whole oil droplets or attached to suspended sediments, can become available to filter feeders, particularly intertidal and shallow subtidal beds of mussels, oysters, and clams (Shigenaka and Henry 1995).”pp22
AND
“Marine invertebrates, including most shellfish, metabolize petroleum compounds slowly and inefficiently; consequently, they tend to accumulate high concentrations and wide ranges of PAHs (Law and Hellou 1999).”pp24
The page numbers are according to the PDF file while scrolling and not the actual physical page numbers.
Keep up the excellent work! We need you.
A friend online brought this to my attention–thought it might interest you in light of you post
http://www.scribd.com/doc/40518642/Gulf-Shrimp-Lab-Testing-Digestive-Tracts
I looked for an e-mail, to send this to you Dr Hooper-Bui, I didn’t see one so I am going to post this here, another link: http://metaoceanic.blogspot.com/2010/10/harmful-bacteria-found-in-rainwater.html
I don’t know if or when you will have time to get to this, but if you find the time, I would love to know what you think of this.
Thank you for writing this important blog. It’s great to see people who are doing the science (congratulations!) express themselves in a way that’s immediately available and understandable. I found you through Florida Oil Spill Law which has been publishing snippets from other reputable scientists.
Thanks also for publishing your opinion about seafood. I love seafood but made the same sad calculation as you did.
I apologize for posting a document that is not directly related to this discussion/post but, I feel it is something that will interest you personally Dr Hooper-Bui. First this story: http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-12-10-leaked-documents-show-epa-allowed-bee-toxic-pesticide-
and this PDF document from the EPA used as a primary source in the above story: http://www.panna.org/sites/default/files/Memo_Nov2010_Clothianidin.pdf