Tuesday, 3 January, 2017The W.A.N.G.A. PrinciplesVideo ArchivesExxon Valdez videoAccidental ActivistsRiki’s BlogMedia AdvisoriesChemical ExposureClinial EvaluationThe W.A.N.G.A. PrinciplesVideo ArchivesExxon Valdez videoAccidental Activists
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The Exxon Valdez ran aground March 24, 1989.
I recall with stark clarity the shock of flying over the tanker wreck on March 24, 1989, and seeing the black inky stain of some 11 to 33 million gallons of oil on the water. I made a personal vow that day to work upstream of oil spills to help our nation transition off fossil fuels. With my PhD in marine toxicology, I figured I knew enough to make a difference. More importantly, I cared enough. Certainly, at the time, I didn’t know this would become my life’s work––or where this path would lead.
During the twenty years before the Exxon Valdez oil spill, as I trained to become a marine toxicologist, laws were passed to protect air and water quality, worker safety, and public health and welfare. Back then the science focused only on part of crude oil, the “light ends” that easily dissolved into water or evaporated into air. During the twenty years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, scientists’ understanding of oil impacts in the natural world changed when they focused on another part of crude oil, the heavy black stuff that persists on beaches––the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs.
Ah-hah moments in science, like when it was “discovered” that the world is round, are “paradigm shifts.” The world was always round: it was peoples’ understanding of it that changed. Likewise, crude oil was always toxic: scientists’ understanding of it changed when they understood that PAHs were 1,000 times more toxic to wildlife than the light ends. When breathed or absorbed through skin or consumed, PAHs enter cells and jam cell function, causing respiratory problems, central nervous system problems, skin and blood disorders, weakening of the immune system, and chronic problems such as liver and kidney damage and reproductive dysfunction. In short, crude oil is a systemic poison––not just in wildlife, but in people, too. A whole new field of “environmental medicine” emerged as medical researchers and doctors began to understand the symptoms and effects of “chemical illnesses” on the human body from exposure to oil, synthetic oil-based products, chemicals, a