BP Oil Slams Florida

Florida has been hit with huge amounts of oil from the BP oil spill:

• Tears after heartbreaking discovery near FL border: “Massive amounts of submerged and sub-surface oil” pushed on to beaches — “Neverending” (VIDEO)

• *CONFIRMED* Chemist: That’s BP oil on Southwest Florida beach — “Should put to rest any doubt” over origin of 173 ppm oil found in sand near Sarasota

• Orange Beach: “Billions of tar balls” (VIDEO)

• Oil under sand still just “as toxic as the fresh oil”: Sample “had to be diluted 20 TIMES to get a reading” — Florida agency says SAME sample NOT toxic

• FL Fisherman: “Like having a chemical dump site and not telling anyone” — “Oh no, I’m cleaning flounders right now that I just caught within eyesight of there”

• Miami wildlife officer: “Birds sporadically dispersed, floating southward, about a mile slick of them” — CBS reports 10 dead (VIDEOS & PHOTO)

• Miami-area: Many large birds reported “floating in Biscayne Bay covered in oil” — “Biologists mind-boggled” (VIDEO)

• “Could we all be at risk?” asks local Florida news station — Medical doctor has patients testing in 95th percentile for oil spill-associated chemicals (VIDEOS)

In related news from the past 3 days:

• All 40 scientists agree at meeting: “Fish in the Gulf of Mexico will continue to get sick, die or fail to reproduce as a result” of oil — What about the people?

• Multiple boats of fishermen sickened on November 1 — One still hospitalized after “bleeding in his esophagus”

• Dallas surgeon “has treated many people from the Gulf that have been made sick by BP’s toxic chemicals”

• “I don’t recommend eating Gulf seafood, not with the risk of liver and kidney damage” says toxicologist — “They’re sniffing for something they can’t detect”

• Scientists worry about “a cascade of events that will lead to the collapse of entire Gulf species” — May have pushed a variety of sharks “to their tipping point”

• Doctor: “Dead people don’t talk, dead people don’t sue, dead people don’t tell the truth, and dead people don’t bother BP”

• Official: “We will NEVER get all of the oil off the beach, that’s just something we have to come to grips with” (VIDEO)

• “Human race survives methane plume, for now” — May take 400 years to be clear on how methane affected Gulf says professor

• “Data that’s been gathered about the spill’s impact has yet to be made public” — USF Dean: Feds will not share test results with researchers who collected samples

• Dispersant use contaminates volume of water with up to 1,000 more PAHs — What’s worse? These toxic parts of oil remain longest

• Toxicologist: “We tested a good number of seafood samples and in 100 percent we found petroleum” — Gov’t tests “little more than a farce”

Headlines courtesy of Florida Oil Spill Law.