Ethic Soup

Dirt on BP Cleanup: Hookers Arrive for Cleanup Crews

Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge, South Louisiana, near Port Fourchon

"Cleanup workers are still getting screwed. And that was before the hookers arrived."

What a great opening. That's how Mac McClelland begins her Mother Jones' post a few days ago. You really should read it.

McClelland, pictured right, is Mother Jones' human rights reporter, and a damn good reporter. Mac has a mole inside BP's cleanup operation. Here's some of what she's learned from him:

BP MOLE

The cleanup workers, pictured left, provided a photo-op wearing  protective Tyvek suits. But workers aren't wearing those anymore. Also, the men no longer wear respirators since BP and OSHA are no longer cautious and have decided, well, they aren't absolutely necessary. 

SHOULD YOU FEEL SICK -- PEE IN THE CUP

What if workers get sick, particularly without wearing any protective gear? Well, there are medics there. But, workers who ask for a medic's help are automatically drug tested, says McClelland, which for some can be a powerful incentive to not report injuries.

LOST PAYCHECKS

"Not that keeping a cleanup job necessarily equals getting paid," she adds. Her BP mole says the contractors continue to lose workers' paychecks, confirmed by local newspapers.

The only kind of air-monitoring equipment ever seen on the island are small multigas meters, designed for indoor use, that simply are not up to the job.

The BP worker, who is spilling the beans about the oil cleanup on the beaches, says that no one seems concerned about cleaning it up and are not accomplishing anything.

BRING IN THE HOOKERS

Actually, they have accomplished something -- "They've brought in prostitutes." As McClelland says in Mother Jones, no one really knows who the "they" are who brought in the pack of hookers, but  they have definitely arrived and it costs $200 to buy some time with one.

"It only took someone a whole month even to figure out that it would be lucrative to sell sex to guys earning 44 hours of overtime a week and living in camps and converted 18-wheelers."

Interesting -- I haven't heard anything about hookers on any of the news networks reporting 24-7 on the oil spill.

CLICK AND READ "PELICANS VS GUSHING OIL: THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION AGAIN"

CLICK AND READ "THE OIL SPILL AND MORALITY: WHERE ARE WE GOING AS A SPECIES?"

 by Sharon McEachern

Pelicans vs Gushing Oil: The Brink of Extinction Again?

Just last year the brown pelicans were officially taken off the endangered species list --  living proof that a species brought to the edge of extinction could vigorously come back and stay healthy to once again 'live long and prosper.'

FIRST PESTICIDES, NOW OIL

The first time the state bird of Louisiana was hard hit it was by DDT and other pesticides, resulting in thinning the shells of their eggs, which were then crushed when the adults sat on them for hatching. Pesticides wiped out the pelicans in the 1960s.

Now they are victims of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and being taken from their rookeries to rescue centers. The National Wildlife Federation is worried that the oil spill may put a stop to the pelican's recovery in Louisiana.

WHAT WILL THAT MUCH OIL DO? 

What does hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico do to our wildlife? No, the figures, as of last week, are already 21 million to 46 million gallons of crude oil have been dumped into the Gulf. Neither British Petroleum or our federal regulators apparently have accurate figures for anything involved in the spill. 

Pictures of the struggling brown pelican covered in crude symbolizes the damage.

Remember the delightful limerick "The Pelican" by Dixon Lanier Merritt, when you were a kid?

A wonderful bird is the pelican,

His bill will hold more than his belican

He can take in his beak

Food enough for a week,

But I'm damned if I see how the helican.

Nuclear Racism: Black Employees Subjected to Excessive Radiation Exposure

THE DISCRIMINATION alleged in this case is unusually extreme -- because of the physical danger it created for African American employees.

"...It is deeply disturbing that this kind of race-based discrimination could be inflicted upon innocent workers."  

That's what Stuart J. Ishimaru says. He is the Acting Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

He's talking about a Tennessee company that processes nuclear waste, which has agreed to settle federal claims that black employees were subjected to much higher levels of radiation than white employees.

RACE DISCRIMINATION

The EEOC brought legal action against RACE,  Radiological Assistance, Consulting and Engineering, a company that processes radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, hospitals and laboratories. The company was purchased four years ago by Studsvik, a Swedish waste processor. Studsvik says that the alleged incidents happened prior to the sale. 

Daylight Saving Time: More Heart Attacks, Fewer Accidents

 

It's time again to "spring forward" and get another hour of sunlight in the evening. Most people, however, don't know about the health and public safety effects of Daylight Saving Time (DST).

You don't have to worry about it if you live in Arizona or Hawaii. These two states do not observe DST and neither do the three U.S. territories -- American Samoa, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. They all get lots of sunlight anyway.

By the way, drop the final "s" on "saving." The official phrase is "daylight saving time," which is not pluralized. Interestingly, a whole lot more folks Google the wrong phrase compared to the correct one, according to U.S. News & World Report. 

There are some interesting facts about daylight saving time:

THERE MUST BE A LAW

                               Although most people  believe there is a federal rule mandating that states or territories observe daylight saving time, there is none.

There was a 1918 law which legislated for the observance of DST nationwide, but that section of the law was repealed the next year. After that, DST became an issue left up to local jurisdictions. It was actually the Germans and their WWI allies that began using it first.  Daylight saving time was observed nationally again during World War II, but after the war's end was not uniformly practiced.

It wasn't until 1966 that Congress passed the Uniform Time Act, which standardized the start and end dates for DST, yet permitted individual states to stay on standard time if their legislatures allowed it, according to National Geographic News.

Daylight Saving Time seems to both end and save lives.

Light Bulb Ethics: Save Energy, Save Money, Save the Climate

 The incandescent light bulb won't be around much longer. In just about a year, more than half a billion people in almost 30 nations around the globe will say goodbye to the old light bulb.  European Union Energy Ministers joined Australia, the Philippines and Cuba last week when it completed plans to make the sale of incandescent light bulbs illegal in Europe by 2010.

The massive light bulb switch is part of an ambitious energy policy to fight climate change. The U.S. plans to do the ethical and smart thing by joining them (now that we've admitted there is such a thing as climate change and that it's not good) by banning the incandescent light bulb beginning 2012 and phasing out through 2014.

The incandescent is an energy-inefficient light bulb and although its successors are more expensive initially, the more efficient lights will be cheaper in the long run as they use significantly less energy and last longer. Incandescents convert heat into light and are extremely lazy-- using only two percent of the electricity they consume and wasting the rest. When you think how lighting accounts for almost one quarter of the world's electricity use, the possible energy savings are massive.