Zi­co Co­zi­er

Petrotrin has been us­ing a banned sub­stance to clean up the oil spill in the south­west­ern penin­su­lar.Sev­er­al on­line ar­ti­cles raised con­cern about the use of the dis­per­sant Corex­it 9500.Corex­it 9500 was used for the first two days of clean-up op­er­a­tions ac­cord­ing to man­ag­er of Health, Safe­ty and the En­vi­ron­ment for Petrotrin, Shyam Dyal.De­spite the fact that it was used in the be­gin­ning, he de­scribed the sub­stance as "the last op­tion."Used to clean up the spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co, Corex­it was ini­tial­ly de­scribed as no more harm­ful than dish­wash­ing liq­uid by BP rep­re­sen­ta­tives.Ac­cord­ing to Wikipedia, Corex­it has been banned for use on oil spills in the UK since 1988. Swe­den has al­so banned it.It is ap­proved by the US En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) but this de­ci­sion was called in­to ques­tion in 2013 af­ter a re­port by the Gov­ern­ment Ac­count­abil­i­ty Project al­leged "dev­as­tat­ing long-term ef­fects on hu­man health and the Gulf of Mex­i­co ecosys­tem" stem­ming from the use of Corex­it.

Com­ment­ing on the ef­fects of the oil spill on peo­ple, Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan said it would not cause long-last­ing ill ef­fects on health but on­ly pos­si­ble nau­sea and dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing at the time of ex­po­sure."The most it will pro­voke is an ir­ri­tat­ing ef­fect on the res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem. It can ag­gra­vate an asth­ma con­di­tion. Once you leave the area or the smell is gone you should be fine," he added.He said the me­dia may have fo­cused on iso­lat­ed in­ci­dents where in­di­vid­u­als fell sick and giv­en a mis­lead­ing im­pres­sion to the pub­lic that an ex­ag­ger­at­ed num­ber of peo­ple were falling ill."The amount of peo­ple who have been ad­mit­ted for med­ical con­cerns is min­i­mal. There hasn't been a surge of peo­ple com­ing in for res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments," he added.

Oth­er lo­cal med­ical pro­fes­sion­als were ei­ther un­will­ing or un­able to weigh in on the ef­fects of in­hal­ing the fumes from the oil spill in La Brea.Over 20 pro­fes­sion­als, from spe­cialised fields that in­clud­ed on­col­o­gy, phys­i­ol­o­gy, bio-chem­istry, en­docrinol­o­gy and oto­laryn­gol­o­gy, ei­ther re­ferred the T&T Guardian to an­oth­er doc­tor or sug­gest­ed con­sult­ing a dif­fer­ent kind of spe­cial­ist.

Some ad­mit­ted they didn't know what to ad­vise, while oth­ers ad­vised: "Look it up on­line."Sev­er­al ar­ti­cles by over­seas me­dia af­ter the oil spill in the Gulf of Mex­i­co fo­cused on con­cerns raised by med­ical pro­fes­sion­als about pos­si­ble long-term res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es among peo­ple af­fect­ed by a spill.

Food chain

One po­ten­tial prob­lem is that tox­ins from the oil or dis­per­sants could find their way in­to the food sup­ply. Dyal said fish­er­folk in the area were hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty sell­ing their fish as cus­tomers were hes­i­tant to pur­chase. They are now call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to con­duct tox­i­c­i­ty tests.In New Or­leans, Unit­ed States, dur­ing clean-up op­er­a­tions, a ban was placed on fish­ing un­til of­fi­cials could de­ter­mine whether the fish was safe for con­sump­tion.Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion De­vant Ma­haraj, when con­tact­ed by the T&T Guardian, said he saw no need for such an ap­proach in T&T as there was no proof that any­thing was wrong with the ma­rine life at this point.