The Stages of Oil Grief

It's becoming apparent that the BP oil catastrophe, for lovers of Pensacola Beach, among others, is going to be like a death in the family. As the smells and the toxins come ever closer, each of us is likely to experience something very much like Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' "stages of grief" as first outlined in her book On Death and Dying.

A common representation of her ideas boils things down to this graphic, showing shock and denial... anger... depression.... bargaining... and acceptance:

One could quibble over the number and the exact nature of each of these stages, but the basic idea resonates with almost everyone who has lost a loved one.

Last night, to judge from his late-night blog post, the estimable Rick Outzen of Pensacola's Independent News leaped way ahead of most of us in the Pensacola Beach grieving process. Most people in Pensacola are still in denial or they're mad as hell. Rick already is plunging into feelings of depression and hopelessness:

We aren’t supposed to win. British Petroleum is a global oil company, which made $5.6 billion the first three months of 2010. We are a community recovering from three hurricanes, a depressed real estate market and national recession. I am the publisher of a weekly newspaper and creator of a little blog.
* * *
BP will buy people off. They will run ads convincing us that all is fine. They will pay a bunch of $5000 claims, settle with the federal and state governments and continue to make billions every month. They will blame our claims and the cost of cleanup for “making” them raise the price of gas at the pump. Greedy Pensacola will pay for its claims at each fill-up.

We can’t win.

There's more, along the same lines. But his post was (as he confesses) written in the lonely hours after midnight.

Not to sound like an insipid neighbor trying glibly to help him buck up, but Rick Outzen has been doing a tremendous job sitting by the bedside of a desperately ill Gulf of Mexico. And he's been doing it for a very long time, often running extremely good and sometimes prescient articles in the Independent News calling attention to pollution of our waters and the indifference or outright hostility to the environment manifested by the voting records of too many of our elected leaders.

Lately, he's also become a regular contributor to The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast is an innovative and important news web site who writers often are guests on the razor-sharp, informative, and entertaining Rachel Maddow Show and Keith Olbermann's Countdown . Rick recently has been among them, too.

Kübler-Ross suggests that in circumstances such as we have now, friends and relatives should let those who grieve "talk, cry, or scream, if necessary. Let them share and ventilate, but be available."

You can be available for Rick by checking out his collected Daily Beast articles right here.

Saturday BP Oil Spill Update: The Smell of Oil

1. Olfactory Sensations.

Multiple reports began circulating yesterday that the smell of oil has reached Pensacola Beach. One beach friend writes, "This scent is just -- WRONG. Smells like an industrial plant or heavy equipment garage, not like the lovely scents of the sea."

Almost made me cry -- not from fumes (it's nowhere near that strong), but just because it smelled like an omen, a forerunner of much worse to come. I HOPE I'M WRONG.

I flagged down a passing PBeach fire/rescue truck to let them know. They didn't seem impressed. Told me, yeah, it's out there, about 25 miles offshore (I thought it was 50; they reiterated 25). Told me it wasn't surprising I'd smelled it, what with the wind from that direction. The driver said let's hope that's all we get from it, is the smell.

Sean Dugas of the News Journal reports beach lifeguards began detecting "a kerosene-like smell" about 5 pm: "The smell was reported at various locations on Pensacola Beach as well as in the Navarre and Gulf Breeze areas."

2. Health Hazard.

The smell won't kill you, we suppose, but the oily source could. The public's attention largely has been trained on the widespread death of sea life certain to occur because of BP's Deepwater oil gusher. Surprisingly little has been written about the hazards to human health.

Expect that to change in the coming weeks. Beyond the foreseeable short-term "headaches, nausea, coughing and throat irritation," Business Week reports the oil spill poses "significant" and "long term" health risks for people. Dr. Gina Solomon of the National Resources Defense Council says the health hazards arise from direct exposure as well as through a contaminated food chain:

Health-care workers and the general public alike could face risks by inhaling various components of crude oil, such as benzene, toluene and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, all of which may cause cancer, according to the NRDC.

Crude oil also contains mercury and lead, both of which can be dangerous if inhaled or swallowed, the group stated.

Among the most serious life-threatening health risks are cancer and chronic respiratory disease. Dr. Solomon explains that "chemicals like benzene... can be released in a vapor phase from the oil that's floating in the water."

These chemicals can cause acute health effects such as headache, nausea, vomiting, cough, dizziness. The chemicals can also cause longer-term effects, including the potential for miscarriage or low birth weight in pregnant women and risk of cancer over the longer term.

As the oil comes closer, smelling the beach air may be like pointing a gas hose at your head and squeezing the trigger.

3. Dispensing with Dispersants.

The New Orleans Times Picayune reports the underwater injection of dispersants at the site of BP's oil spill "were halted Thursday." The reason given is that, "science knows so little about life on the ocean floor that it's impossible to know what harm was being done by piping the antifreeze-like chemicals to the source of gushing oil some 5,000 feet below the water's surface."

Now they tell us? As a well known war criminal might have told them, we already knew what we didn't know. So, a question logically arises which reporter Sheila Grissett, to her credit, asks outright: "Was it a mistake to disperse in deep water in the first place?"

LSU professor of environmental sciences Ralph Portier offers this answer:

"We don't even have enough data to say that. We just don't know.''

It shouldn't surprise us if the answer eventually makes it way up the food chain: 'We've all died.'

4. Oil Spill Weather Report.

Locally, TV and radio weathermen have been forecasting the likely direction of oil slick sloshes with the same enthusiasm usually reserved for hurricanes in the Gulf and swirling winds in Tornado Alley. Even boatless beach people like us pay rapt attention to marine forecasts and wave height measurements of at-sea buoys.

Speaking of new internet tools to track the oily destruction of the Gulf Coast, the University of South Florida has developed an experimental animated Daily Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill weather map. (Click on the image, left, and choose the speed of animation to see the latest oil sludge forecast.)


5. The Facebook of Ignorance.

All in all, weathermen included, the BP oil disaster daily has been re-teaching us a lesson we seem to have forgotten, over and over, at least since May 7, 1954: Neither the various governments we elect, nor the multi-nation corporations, nor the "experts" have a clue. As Xeni Jarden asks over at Boing-Boing, "What's the only thing that could possibly make the catastrophic Gulf oil spill any worse?"

The answer? A "joint U.S.-BP" Facebook page!