File in the “You’ve Got to Be Kidding Us” column…
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Exxon Mobil has ignored a Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) leak for two years, which has allowed 400 gallons of toxic oil to leak into the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, CA.
In legal terms this amounts to, “allegedly disposing of and improperly handling polychlorinated biphenyls … in violation of the federal Toxic Substances Control Act.”
Exxon has agreed to settle the case and pay a penalty of only $2.64 million (less than 1% of the $11.68 billion it made in the last quarter alone).
Way back in 1978 PCBs were banned because they cause a host of health problems including cancer, birth defects, reproductive problems, hormone disruption, etc. AND they never go away. PCBs have been found in Arctic wildlife not because anyone uses or dumps them there there, but because they travel with the weather and have rained down, polluting otherwise pristine environments.
PCBs are the reason you can’t safely eat most fish in the Hudson, the Housatonic, the Fox and other iconic American rivers. PCBs stick to fat and accumulate in the tissues of living things (yes, humans too; PCBs are in the breast milk of many American women), becoming more concentrated in animals higher on the food chain.
This is nasty and dangerous stuff but Exxon doesn’t seem to give a darn!
Before we ‘drill, baby, drill’ we need to do our due diligence before we poison ourselves to save a few cents on a gallon of gas…
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
Leave a Comment