Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Policy Carol Browner takes your questions about the Deepwater BP Oil Spill and the Federal response to the disaster.

Carol Browner looks like she’s barely holding it together for this little “take your questions” session that they held online on Friday.

Her answer to the question on why they are still allowing the use of the dispersant is classic:  It’s still being used because it’s on the list of EPA approved dispersants.  Even though it’s banned in England.  So it’s being used because it’s approved.  BP thinks its perfectly OK to use it here, even if it does rot your flesh, and give you cancer and make appendages turn black and fall off; or whatever  else Corexit does.  It’s not healthy stuff.

Until recently the EPA was not releasing Corexit’s ingredients to the public, but last Friday they made public a list of, supposedly,  all of the ingredients on their website.  Until Friday, some of the chemicals in Corexit were still a protected trade secret.  That means that BP was granted the right to experiment with its chemicals on people and wildlife, while keeping those ingredients secret.  If one of the clean-up workers had to be treated by an emergency doctor, the doctor did not even know what chemicals caused the damage to the patient. How can doctors treat people when they don’t even know what possible toxins they are trying to counteract?  From Greenwire:

Three ingredients of the two Corexit formulas were already available on material safety data sheets that outline the human health risks of using the dispersants in the workplace. Corexit 9527, used in lesser quantities during the earlier days of the spill response, is designated a chronic and acute health hazard by EPA. The 9527 formula contains 2-butoxyethanol, pinpointed as the cause of lingering health problems experienced by cleanup workers after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and propylene glycol, a commonly used solvent.

Corexit 9500, described by Pajor as the “sole product” Nalco has manufactured for the Gulf since late April, contains propylene glycol and light petroleum distillates, a type of chemical refined from crude oil. Nalco had previously declined to identify the third hazardous substance in the 9500 formula, but EPA’s website reveals it to be dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate, a detergent and common ingredient in laxatives.

We’re supposed to believe that only the “safer” Corexit has been used since April?  Neither BP nor the EPA has been even remotely honest with the public, as we are just now finding out.  Apparently, the EPA had the list of ingredients of Corexit from the beginning and withheld it from the beginning.

If they didn’t, that means they approved of the use of a dispersant without even knowing all the ingredients in it.  How could they do that?

Obama’s  new “science-driven” EPA thinks this poison is perfectly fine to dump in the ocean, [...]