Questions for the Love Canal Committee

1. In a word, do you believe Love Canal to be safe or unsafe?
2. Do you have any specific, credible studies to back this up?
3. How recent is the studies or evidence? (if the person is against living at Love Canal, because most of the people who are against it are citing studies which occurred before the cleaning, meaning the study might no longer apply)
4. When you say the area is safe, would you really be willing to live in the area yourself? (if the person is for living at Love Canal, because there seems to be a sort of double standard with some of the people that are for living there)
5. Do you sincerely agree with your assigned character's stance? (if the person's character forces the person to have a certain stance on the issue, like Occidental representatives)

Love Canal

The blizzard of 1977 is largely cited as a sort of "fuse" for the chemicals under Love Canal. The snow and precipitation is said to have sunk underground, thereby pushing chemicals to the surface.
Some known effects of the chemicals on humans are cancer, liver problems, oxidative stress and other damage to the nervous system, and even birth defects.
The rest of the ecosystem was affected by the same chemicals: water and the the sediment beneath the Niagara River was contaminated, and chances are that any wildlife in the area would be just as exposed if the chemicals still occupied the Canal.

Hazards of Oil Dispersants

Here's a brief list of the spill's alleged influence on marine life:

• The dispersant used by BP at the beginning of the spill caused internal bleeding
• The dispersant breaks down the lipid membrane of cells, so that oil enters the skin and organs more easily
• As with oil, the dispersant damages the nervous system, immune system, respiratory functions, endocrine, blood, liver and kidneys. The difference is that the both of them together is far worse than either substance on its own.
• Damage to all organs, encouraging or causing cancer, mutations or birth defects

Attempting to solve one problem has in this case caused a larger one, yes.  Oil is poisonous and spreads everywhere, covering and clogging animals' respiratory functions and internal organs, and covering underwater and coastline habitats.  Dispersants don't exactly help much; see above.  Aside from those effects, how much worse the spill is than it would be otherwise is hard for me to figure out, because despite knowing so much of the negative effects of the dispersant, I don't really know what the positives are (the information on that matter seems pretty contradictory).

As for whether the oil or dispersant is worse, I'm not really the sort of person to ask.  Decisions like that are better left up to toxicologists, and I am of the personal belief that spreading an uneducated opinion, even if it is my own, is a very stupid thing to do.  If I know only part of the situation, based on pieces of only one or two viewpoints, then I'm hardly justified to make observations based on it (regardless of how common this is).  What's more, there's no such thing as a scientific opinion.  This might be a rather long way to write out "I don't know enough on the subject to have a respectable opinion" but I hope this is enough that you can understand where I'm coming from.

We as a whole know only part of the situation, actually.  Most information on the dispersant is locked up as "trade secrets," and as the video states, the release of information on the dispersant as requested by the government really didn't happen: the most relevant information was largely skipped over or ignored in any public reports.

An addendum for anyone who feels like hating on BP today: British Petroleum donated one BILLION dollars to be used for an alternative to oil dispersants for any future spill by any company in the oil industry, regardless of how poorly they may have handled their own problems.  With all of the ridiculous spending going around it may be hard to put in perspective, but let me say it simply: that is a lot of money.

Wow, this is a lot of text. @_@ I hope you don't expect this for every blog post!