AP Photo/John Gaps III
High winds on Prince William Sound push crude oil up into an inlet on Squire Island, Alaska, April 10, 1989.
by the collapse of pink salmon stocks in August for the second consecutive year. Frustrated fishermen blockaded Valdez Narrows and held up oil tanker traffic for three days to bring public attention to the ailing sound. Fishermen reasoned that the fish population collapses stemmed from delayed effects on fish exposed to deadly oil when they were eggs, embryos, larvae and juveniles. It took scientists another seven years to prove fishermen were right and to recalibrate the bar on oil toxicity. Finally, in response to mounting public pressure, scientists conducted four ecosystem studies on Prince William Sound. Two studies focused on PAHs, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These are benzene compounds found in the supposedly environmentally benign oil. PAHs are slow-acting poisons that kill sensitive eggs and embryos, stunt growth, jam reproductive codes of juveniles and sicken adults. Today, beaches in the sound are still covered in PAHs. These two studies, in addition to a growing body of medical studies in the 1980s and 1990s led scientists to the conclusion that PAHs had a persistent deadly effect on humans. By 1999 scientists had established the severe long-term toxicity of oil at extraordinarily low levels — 1,000 times lower than www.waterkeeper.org
levels previously thought safe. Medical doctors linked low levels of PAHs with respiratory problems, like asthma and bronchitis, cancer and other alterations in the DNA code, and the aggravation of heart attacks and arrhythmias. With this evidence, U.S. EPA added 22 PAHs to its list of persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic pollutants in 1999. This deadly list also includes mercury, dioxin and lead. With the exception of PAHs, chemicals on this list are highly controlled substances with production of some, like DDT and PCBs, banned in the U.S. and elsewhere. Like an incoming tide, PAH levels in air and water now pose a serious threat to public health and the environment. According to the National Research Council, the average PAH level in some rivers in North America approaches the range known to sicken and kill wildlife and diminish entire populations of species. But federal laws and regulations have not kept up with the new science on oil toxicity and do not adequately protect the public and the environment. We need to treat oil as what it is, a deadly pollutant that is, quite literally, harming people, our children and all other species. w
Riki Ott has a Ph.D. in marine toxicology and experienced the Exxon Valdez oil spill first-hand. She is author of Sound Truth and Corporate Myth$ (Dragonfly Sisters Press, 2005) and the forth-coming Not One Drop (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007), both about the long-term environmental and socio-economic effects of the spill and its legacy for society. She lives in Cordova, Alaska. www. soundtruth.info
Summer 2007 Waterkeeper Magazine 37
