Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Soap is more tox­ic than the chem­i­cal dis­per­sant Corex­it 9500.This was the as­ser­tion made by deputy head of the Oil Spill Con­tin­gency Plan Mark Rud­der, yes­ter­day.Rud­der, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian at the As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers of T&T (Apett) tech­ni­cal con­fer­ence at Cara Suites, Clax­ton Bay, said there was no need for con­cern over Petrotrin's use of the chem­i­cal dis­per­sant in the La Brea oil spill clean-up.

He point­ed to En­vi­ron­ment Cana­da, a Cana­di­an agency, which list­ed the chem­i­cal con­tent of prod­ucts and found that Pal­mo­live dish­wash­ing soap was "27 times more tox­ic than Corex­it."In fact, Rud­der said some every­day soaps that peo­ple use con­tain in­gre­di­ents found in Corex­it.

"Some light soap that we use is more tox­ic than Corex­it and the in­gre­di­ents of Corex­it are list­ed on the Nal­co (Corex­it's man­u­fac­tur­er) Web site and the EPA (En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency) Web site. You could see ex­act­ly what the in­gre­di­ents are and you will see next to each in­gre­di­ent it is used in every­day prod­ucts that are non-pre­scrip­tion use."So talk about it be­ing tox­ic. I do not know where that in­for­ma­tion is com­ing from," Rud­der said.

He said the Min­istry of En­er­gy will be is­su­ing a re­lease soon on Corex­it, its ap­pli­ca­tion and its tox­i­c­i­ty.He al­so said con­sumers need not wor­ry about eat­ing fish from the Gulf of Paria.Rud­der, who is on the in­ci­dent com­mand team that is man­ag­ing the De­cem­ber 17 oil spill clean-up, said the ma­jor­i­ty of the oil has been re­moved and there is some light clean­ing still to be done on the beach in La Brea.

How­ev­er, he said, there is still some work to be done in the Aripero man­grove and that has to be done on the ba­sis of pro­nounce­ments from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) on how to ap­proach deal­ing with it.Rud­der de­clined to say if he be­lieved the oil spill con­tin­gency plan had failed in its prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tion in the La Brea area.He said a re­port will be com­piled on the spill and an as­sess­ment will be done on "what went wrong and what did not go well and what could be im­proved.

"There are some things, in how things oc­curred, that did not go ex­act­ly as we would have liked it to go. This is the first oil spill in­ci­dent that ac­ti­vat­ed this par­tic­u­lar re­vised oil spill plan."There would be some ar­eas we would need to im­prove on. Those things will come out based on re­views we will have in­ter­nal­ly and hence we will im­prove on those ar­eas that were lack­ing," Rud­der said.He said the dis­per­sant pol­i­cy is clear in the oil spill con­tin­gency plan and was fol­lowed by Petrotrin."It is a war. You have to at­tack the oil," he said.

Aboud dis­putes Corex­it claims

Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea sec­re­tary Gary Aboud is dis­put­ing Rud­der's as­ser­tion that soap is more tox­ic than Corex­it as "ir­re­spon­si­ble."He said if one sim­ply typed "Corex­it and can­cer" in­to any In­ter­net search en­gine a num­ber of ar­ti­cles and stud­ies would pop up show­ing the tox­i­c­i­ty of the chem­i­cal dis­per­sant."There is no dodg­ing the re­al­i­ty of the Corex­it tox­i­c­i­ty de­bate."There is no tox­i­c­i­ty? The in­for­ma­tion is there for the pub­lic to see. You can read it. Any­body with an In­ter­net (con­nec­tion) can go and find it.

"It is ir­re­spon­si­ble for them to say that in the face of all the in­for­ma­tion that is out there in the world," he said.He said Corex­it breaks down oil, emul­si­fies it and sinks it to the sea floor, mak­ing it more eas­i­ly ab­sorbed by fish and ma­rine life."The hy­dro­car­bons are what is the threat to hu­man health and the Corex­it fa­cil­i­tates the hy­dro­car­bons be­ing ab­sorbed in the food chain – and when it gets in­to the food chain hu­mans ab­sorb it," he said.

Corex­it, which was used wide­ly in the BP Gulf of Mex­i­co oil spill, has been linked to can­cer in hu­mans and fish mu­ta­tion in the Gulf of Mex­i­co.Aboud said stud­ies have shown that Corex­it when mixed with oil makes the oil "52 times more tox­ic.""I think it is PR (pub­lic re­la­tions) to down­play the ef­fects of Corex­it. It is ir­re­spon­si­ble. The EMA should have a cen­tral role and tak­en con­trol of this (oil spill) and they have not. We have ap­pealed to the Pres­i­dent. The en­er­gy com­pa­nies want to down­play li­a­bil­i­ty for them," he com­ment­ed.

Aboud asked if Corex­it was so safe, then why did the oil spill con­tin­gency plan stip­u­late that it should be used three miles from the shore.