My family had a summer house in Galveston and everyone knew 30 years ago that the Bay was a toxic waste dump.
When you have to dodge oil sludge and tar balls on the beach then you know you’re not playing around in pristine waters. Looking out across the water at night you’ll see the gas flares from the offshore rigs.
I’m sure most of the fish taken from the area look like this…
I was already contemplating the safety of seafood after the BP spill and the chemicals used to clean up the spill. All chemicals are innocent until proven guilty, but that doesn’t mean that they are safe, nor that they don’t have longer reaching cause for concern.
When I lived in Texas, I always liked visiting Galveston, but never so much as dipped my toes in the water after the first time. It felt like my legs had been coated with anti-freeze or some other liquid that wasn’t actual seawater.
I always thought that, in lieu of an inaugural ball or whatever, the Governor Elect of Texas should be required to swim around in Galveston Bay before taking the reins. Sort of like the Governor of the Island in Naked Lunch.
This is probably the tip of the iceberg. I would be interested in reading about more locations in the USA.
You’d be surprised, Houston is the hub for just about every major chemical and oil company to product materials in the US just because Texas allows it. Most are good about environmental concerns, but some of them do stupid shit with irreversible consequences on a regular basis.
You’re right, this is the tip of the iceberg. Other Superfund sites like this one are listed on the National Priority List (NPL), which is kept up by the EPA. There are an enormous number of these sites in the US. For example, 50 in Texas, but about 100 in each California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. This website lists them all, and actually gives a good amount of detail about each one. http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/query/queryhtm/nplfin.htm
Or more likely, like this:
I used to think farm fishing is environmentally dodgy, and now I realize that harvesting wild fish is too.
There sure are a lot of good reasons to go vegan.
Thanks for the list. Very interesting and informative.
How depressing. A good friend is a marine biologist and she has told me on numerous occasions about the contamination levels she and her colleagues are witnessing in the oceans. But hey, polar vortex!
Maureen Tucker speculated that this is how Sterling Morrison got sick, from working on tugs in the Ship Channel.
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