BP’s Corexit Oil Tar Sponged Up by Human Skin

Corexit® dispersed oil residue accelerates the absorption of toxins into the skin. The results aren’t visible under normal light (top), but the contamination into the skin appear as fluorescent spots under UV light (bottom). Credit: James H “Rip” Kirby III, Surfrider Foundation

motherjones.com | Apr 17, 2012

By Julia Whitty

The Surfrider Foundation has released its preliminary “State of the Beach” study for the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s ongoing Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Sadly, things aren’t getting cleaner faster, according to their results. The Corexit that BP used to “disperse” the oil now appears to be making it tougher for microbes to digest the oil. I wrote about this problem in depth in “The BP Cover-Up.”

Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists

The persistence of Corexit mixed with crude oil has now weathered to tar, yet is traceable to BP’s Deepwater Horizon brew through its chemical fingerprint. The mix creates a fluorescent signature visible under UV light. From the report:

The program uses newly developed UV light equipment to detect tar product and reveal where it is buried in many beach areas and also where it still remains on the surface in the shoreline plunge step area. The tar product samples are then analyzed…to determine which toxins may be present and at what concentrations. By returning to locations several times over the past year and analyzing samples, we’ve been able to determine that PAH concentrations in most locations are not degrading as hoped for and expected.

Worse, the toxins in this unholy mix of Corexit and crude actually penetrate wet skin faster than dry skin (photos above)—the author describes it as the equivalent of a built-in accelerant—though you’d never know it unless you happened to look under fluorescent light in the 370nm spectrum. The stuff can’t be wiped off. It’s absorbed into the skin.

And it isn’t going away. Other findings from monitoring sites between Waveland, Mississippi, and Cape San Blas, Florida over the past two years:

The use of Corexit is inhibiting the microbial degradation of hydrocarbons in the crude oil and has enabled concentrations of the organic pollutants known as PAH to stay above levels considered carcinogenic by the NIH and OSHA.

•     26 of 32 sampling sites in Florida and Alabama had PAH concentrations exceeding safe limits.

•     Only three locations were found free of PAH contamination.

•     Carcinogenic PAH compounds from the toxic tar are concentrating in surface layers of the beach and from there leaching into lower layers of beach sediment. This could potentially lead to contamination of groundwater sources.

The full Surfrider Foundation report by James H. “Rip” Kirby III, of the University of South Florida is open-access online here.

Could Vladimir Putin be in power until 2024?

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov, tycoon and independent candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, Nationalist Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky and A Just Russia party leader Sergey Mironov will battle for the country’s presidency on Sunday. Reuters

Having extended the presidential term of office from four to six years, Putin would remain in charge until 2018 – or 2024, if he won a second term. By then, Putin would have chalked up 24 years in power out of the 33 years since the collapse of Communism thanks to his previous terms as president and prime minister.

Could Vladimir Putin be in power until 2024? 10 key questions about Russia’s elections

MSNBC | Mar 1, 2012

More than 100 million Russians will go to the polls on Sunday to elect a president who will be in office for the next six years. Msnbc.com’s Alastair Jamieson examines the potential outcomes — and what’s at stake.

What do the polls suggest will happen?

Most polls indicate it will be an outright victory for Vladimir Putin, the current prime minister and former president who has made a deal with his ally Dmitry Medvedev, the former prime minister and current president. Despite initial public outrage over their job swap, Putin is consistently polling at around 50 per cent – well ahead of the fragmented opposition.

And even if voters do not endorse Putin, his victory is likely to be assured with the help of regional officials loyal to his United Russia party. Having extended the presidential term of office from four to six years, Putin would remain in charge until 2018 – or 2024, if he won a second term. By then, Putin would have chalked up 24 years in power out of the 33 years since the collapse of Communism thanks to his previous terms as president and prime minister.

If the outcome is such a certainty, why should the U.S. and other Western countries care?

Experts agree the U.S. will find Russia harder to deal with on Putin’s return. On Wednesday, British think tank Chatham House warned that “Russia’s stability is at increased risk” due to Putin’s determination to stay in power. “The overriding objective of Vladimir Putin and his team is to preserve the narrow and personalized ruling system that they have built over the past 12 years,” it said in a report. “Real change, necessarily involving accountability and devolution of power, would disrupt the system. But without real change, Russia cannot develop as effectively as it could, and the Putin system is vulnerable to shock.”

Opposition leaders believe Russia at a crossroads in this election, according to NBC News correspondent Jim Maceda.

“The choice is stark: six, perhaps 12, more years of an authoritative regime that is belligerent to critics … and which sees the U.S. and its allies as Cold War rivals — or a new, more democratic Russia that respects its neighbors and no longer snubs the West,” he said.

“The feeling is that a President Putin will instinctively shrink from, rather than encourage, co-operation with the West on a range of issues including Iran and Syria, so there’s a lot at stake for the U.S. in this election,” added Maceda, who has reported on the country since the days of the Soviet Union.

Although Putin enjoys strong domestic popularity, especially in rural Russia, dissatisfaction with his seemingly invincible regime has resulted in unprecedented public protests, with thousands joining recent marches in central Moscow that would have been unthinkable only a few months ago.

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Japanese tsunami debris ‘to reach Hawaii in next few days’

Japanese Tsunami debris will make landfall soon on small atolls northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands

Lumber, boats and other debris ripped from Japanese coastal towns by tsunamis last year have spread across some 3,000 miles to areas halfway across the North Pacific.

Telegraph | Feb 29, 2012

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated the first bits of tsunami debris will make landfall soon on small atolls northwest of the main Hawaiian Islands. The rest of the debris was expected to reach the coasts of Oregon, Washington state, Alaska and Canada around 2014.

NOAA’s tsunami marine debris coordinator, Ruth Yender, told an online news conference Tuesday that agency workers were boarding Coast Guard flights that patrol the archipelago. NOAA also asked scientists stationed at Midway and other atolls to look for the debris.

Debris initially collected in a thick mass in the ocean after tsunamis dragged homes, boats, cars and other parts of daily life from coastal towns out to sea. Most likely sank not far from Japan’s eastern coast.

In September, a Russian training ship spotted a refrigerator, a television set and other appliances west of Hawaii. By now, the debris has likely drifted so far apart that only one object can be seen at a time, said Nikolai Maximenko, a University of Hawaii researcher and ocean currents expert.

One to 2 million tons of debris remain in the ocean, but only one to 5 per cent of that could reach Hawaii, Alaska, Oregon, Washington state and Canada’s British Columbia, Maximenko said. The tsunamis generated a total of 20 million to 25 million tons of debris, including what was left on land.

Yender said that so far, no debris confirmed to be from the tsunamis has landed on American shores, including large buoys suspected to be from Japanese oyster farms found in Alaska last year. The buoys would have had to travel faster than currents to get to Alaska at that time if they were set loose by the March 11 tsunamis.

Similar buoys have washed ashore in Alaska and the US West Coast before the tsunami, she said.

Yender said there is little chance of any debris being contaminated by radiation. The debris came from a large swath of Japan’s northeastern coast, not only near the tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant in Fukushima. Further, it was dragged out to sea with the tsunamis, not while the Fukushima plant experienced multiple meltdowns.

Nicholas Mallos, a conservation biologist and marine debris specialist for the Ocean Conservancy, said many of the objects in the debris were expected to be from Japan’s fishing industry. That could pose a risk for wildlife, such as endangered Hawaiian monk seals, if fishing gear washes up on coral reefs or beaches.

“The major question is how much of that material has sank since last year, and how much of that remains afloat or still in the water column,” Mallos said.

Maximenko said the dispersion of the debris makes it more difficult to track but no less hazardous.

“In many cases it’s not density that matters, it’s total amount,” he said. “For example, if there’s a current flowing around Midway island, that island would collect debris like a trawl moving across the ocean. It will collect all the debris on its way.”

Ultimately, Maximenko said, tsunami debris will join garbage floating in a gyre north of Hawaii produced by swirling Pacific currents. Much of that trash in a wide area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bits of plastic, which slowly breaks down into smaller pieces but doesn’t completely disappear.

It was unclear whether large items like refrigerators will make it across the ocean because there has been little precedent for such an event.

How the Yakuza went nuclear

Suzuki Tomohiko’s book on the ties between the yakuza and the nuclear industry

What really went wrong at the Fukushima plant? One undercover reporter risked his life to find out

Telegraph | Feb 21, 2012

By Jake Adelstein

On March 11 2011, at 2:46pm, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck Japan. The earthquake, followed by a colossal tsunami, devastated the nation, together killing over 10,000 people. The earthquake also triggered the start of a triple nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, run by Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). Of the three reactors that melted down, one was nearly 40 years old and should have been decommissioned two decades ago. The cooling pipes, “the veins and arteries of the old nuclear reactors”, which circulated fluid to keep the core temperature down, ruptured.

Approximately 40 minutes after the shocks, the tsunami reached the power plant and knocked out the electrical systems. Japan’s Nuclear Industrial Safety Agency (Nisa) had warned Tepco about safety violations and problems at the plant days before the earthquake; they’d been warned about the possibility of a tsunami hitting the plant for years.

The denials began almost immediately. “There has been no meltdown,” government spokesman Yukio Edano intoned in the days after March 11. “It was an unforeseeable disaster,” Tepco’s then president Masataka Shimizu chimed in. As we now know, the meltdown was already taking place. And the disaster was far from unforeseeable.

Tepco has long been a scandal-ridden company, caught time and time again covering up data on safety lapses at their power plants, or doctoring film footage which showed fissures in pipes. How was the company able to get away with such long-standing behaviour? According to an explosive book recently published in Japan, they owe it to what the author, Tomohiko Suzuki, calls “Japan’s nuclear mafia… A conglomeration of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, the shady nuclear industry, their lobbyists…” And at the centre of it all stands Japan’s actual mafia: the yakuza.

It might surprise the Western reader that gangsters are involved in Japan’s nuclear industry and even more that they would risk their lives in a nuclear crisis. But the yakuza roots in Japanese society are very deep. In fact, they were some of the first responders after the earthquake, providing food and supplies to the devastated area and patrolling the streets to make sure no looting occurred.

As the scale of the catastrophe at Fukushima became apparent, many workers fled the scene. To contain the nuclear meltdown, a handful of workers stayed behind, being exposed to large amounts of radiation: the so-called “Fukushima Fifty”. Among this heroic group, according to Suzuki, were several members of the yakuza.

The yakuza are not a secret society in Japan. The government tacitly recognises their existence, and they are classified, designated and regulated. Yakuza make their money from extortion, blackmail, construction, real estate, collection services, financial market manipulation, protection rackets, fraud and a labyrinth of front companies including labour dispatch services and private detective agencies. They do the work that no one else will do or find the workers for jobs no one wants.

“Almost all nuclear power plants that are built in Japan are built taking the risk that the workers may well be exposed to large amounts of radiation,” says Suzuki. “That they will get sick, they will die early, or they will die on the job. And the people bringing the workers to the plants and also doing the construction are often yakuza.” Suzuki says he’s met over 1,000 yakuza in his career as an investigative journalist and former editor of yakuza fanzines. For his book, The Yakuza and the Nuclear Industry, Suzuki went undercover at Fukushima to find first-hand evidence of the long-rumoured ties between the nuclear industry and the yakuza. First he documents how remarkably easy it was to become a nuclear worker at Fukushima after the meltdown. After signing up with a legitimate company providing labour, he entered the plant armed only with a wristwatch with a hidden camera. Working there over several months, he quickly found yakuza-supplied labour, and many former yakuza working on site themselves.

Suzuki discovered evidence of Tepco subcontractors paying yakuza front companies to obtain lucrative construction contracts; of money destined for construction work flying into yakuza accounts; and of politicians and media being paid to look the other way. More shocking, perhaps, were the conditions he says he found inside the plant.

His fellow workers, found Suzuki, were a motley crew of homeless, chronically unemployed Japanese men, former yakuza, debtors who owed money to the yakuza, and the mentally handicapped. Suzuki claims the regular employees at the plant were often given better radiation suits than the yakuza recruits. (Tepco has admitted that there was a shortage of equipment in the disaster’s early days.) The regular employees were allowed to pass through sophisticated radiation monitors while the temporary labourers were simply given hand rods to monitor their radiation exposure.

When Suzuki was working in the plant in August, he had to wear a full-body radiation protective suit and a gas mask that covered his entire face. The hot summer temperatures and the lack of breathability in the suits ensured that almost every day a worker would keel over with heat exhaustion and be carried out; they would invariably return to work the next day. Going to the bathroom was virtually impossible, so workers were simply told to “hold it”. According to Suzuki, the temperature monitors in the plant weren’t even working, and were ignored. Removing the mask during work was against the rules; no matter how thirsty workers became, they could not drink water. After an hour fixing pipes and doing other work, Suzuki says his body felt like it was enveloped in flames. Workers were not checked to see if they were coping, they were expected to report it to their supervisors. However, while Tepco officials on the ground told the workers not to risk injury, it seemed that anyone complaining of the working conditions or fatigue would be fired. Few took their allotted rest breaks.

Related

The Yakuza and the Nuclear Mafia

Those who reported feeling unwell were treated by Tepco doctors, nearly always with what Suzuki says was essentially cold medicine.The risk of radiation exposure was 100 per cent. The masks, if their filters were cleaned regularly, which they were not, could only remove 60 per cent of the radioactive particles in the air. Anonymous workers claimed that the filters themselves were ill-fitting; if they accidentally bumped their masks, radiation could easily get in. The workers’ dosimeter badges, meanwhile, used to measure an individual’s exposure to radiation, could be easily manipulated to give false readings. According to Suzuki, tricks like pinning a badge on backwards, or putting it in your sock, were commonplace. Regular workers were given dosimeters which would sound an alarm when radiation exceeded safe levels, but it made such a racket that, says Suzuki, “people just turned them off or over and kept working.”

The initial work, directly after a series of hydrogen explosions in March, was extremely dangerous. Radiation was reaching levels so high that the Japanese government raised the safety exposure levels and even ordered scientists to stop monitoring radiation levels in some areas of the plants. Tepco sent out word to their contractors to gather as many people as possible and to offer substantial wages. Yakuza recruited from all over Japan; the initial workers were paid 50,000 yen (£407) per day, but one dispatch company offered 200,000 yen (£1,627) per day.

Even then, recruits were hard to find. Officials in Fukushima reportedly told local businesses, “Bring us the living dead. People no one will miss.” The labour crunch was eased somewhat when the Japanese government and Tepco raised the “safe” radiation exposure levels at the plant from pre-earthquake levels of 130-180cpm (radiation exposure per minute) to 100,000cpm.

The work would be further subcontracted to the point where labourers were being sent from sixth-tier firms. A representative from one company told Suzuki of an agreement made with a Tepco subcontractor right after the accident: “Normally, to even enter the grounds of a nuclear power plant a nuclear radiation personal data management pocketbook is required. We were told that wasn’t necessary. We didn’t even have time to give the workers physical examinations before they were sent to the plant.”

A former yakuza boss tells me that his group has “always” been involved in recruiting labourers for the nuclear industry. “It’s dirty, dangerous work,” he says, “and the only people who will do it are homeless, yakuza, or people so badly in debt that they see no other way to pay it off.” Suzuki found people who’d been threatened into working at Fukushima, but others who’d volunteered. Why? “Of course, if it was a matter of dying today or tomorrow they wouldn’t work there,” he explains. “It’s because it could take 10 years or more for someone to possibly die of radiation excess. It’s like Russian roulette. If you owe enough money to the yakuza, working at a nuclear plant is a safer bet. Wouldn’t you rather take a chance at dying 10 years later than being stabbed to death now?” (Suzuki’s own feeling was that the effects of low-level radiation are still unknown and that, as a drinker and smoker, he’s probably no more likely to get cancer than he was before.)

A recent report in Japan’s Mainichi newspaper alleged that workers from southern Japan were brought to the plant in July on false pretences and told to get to work. Many had to enter dangerous radioactive buildings. One man was reportedly tasked with carrying 20kg kilogram sheets of lead from the bottom floor of a damaged reactor up to the sixth floor, where his Geiger counters went into the danger zone. One worker said, “When I tried to quit, the people employing me mentioned the name of a local yakuza group. I got the hint. If Tepco didn’t know what was going on, I believe they should have.” Former Tepco executives, workers, police officials, as well as investigative journalist, Katsunobu Onda, author of TEPCO: The Dark Empire, all agree: Tepco have always known they were working with the yakuza; they just didn’t care. However, the articles Suzuki wrote before his book was published, and my own work, helped create enough public outcry to force Tepco into action. On July 19, four months after the meltdowns, they announced that they would be cutting ties with organised crime.

“They asked the companies that have been working with them for years to send them papers showing they’d cut organised crime ties,” Suzuki says. “They followed up by taking a survey.” Tepco has not answered my own questions on their anti-organised crime initiative as of this date; they’ve previously called Suzuki’s claims “groundless”.

The situation at Fukushima is still dire. Number-two reactor continues to heat up, and appears to be out of control. Rolling blackouts are a regular occurrence. Nuclear reactors are being shut down, one by one, all over Japan. Meanwhile, there is talk that Tepco will be nationalised and its top executives are under investigation for criminal negligence, in relation to the 3/11 disaster. As for the yakuza, the police are beginning to investigate their front companies more closely. “Yakuza may be a plague on society,” says Suzuki, “but they don’t ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and irradiate the planet out of sheer greed and incompetence.” Suzuki says he’s had little trouble from the yakuza about his book’s allegations. He suspects this is because he showed they were prepared to risk their lives at Fukushima – he almost made them look good.

Condoleezza Rice regrets watching Spamalot while Hurricane Katrina struck

Condoleezza Rice went to New York on holiday Photo: GETTY

Condoleezza Rice, the former US Secretary of State, has spoken of her regret at watching a Broadway musical and shopping for shoes in Manhattan while Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

Telegraph | Oct 23, 2011

By Jon Swaine, New York

In a new memoir, Miss Rice describes “kicking herself” for taking a holiday in August 2005 as the disaster struck, killing more than 1,800 people and throwing George W. Bush’s presidency into crisis.

As the most senior black member of Mr Bush’s administration, she was forced to rush to the Deep South to fight claims that the White House’s disastrously slow response was racially motivated.

Miss Rice, now 56, admits that before leaving for New York, she “didn’t think much about the dire warnings” and did little except check that her department’s offices in the Gulf of Mexico were secure.

After checking into the Palace Hotel, she saw news reports that Katrina had struck, and had a brief phone conversation with Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Secretary.

“He said he’d call if he needed me,” she writes. “I hung up, got dressed, and went to see Spamalot,” the musical based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. “The next morning, I went shopping at the Ferragamo shoe store,” she adds in extracts of the book, titled No Higher Honor, which have been published by Newsweek magazine.

The following day, Miss Rice’s activities were splashed through the pages of New York tabloids, which claimed she was berated by a fellow shopper for buying “thousands of dollars worth” of designer shoes while people died. The reports were highlighted on the front page of an influential US news website.

“My senior adviser, Jim Wilkinson, walked into my suite,” she writes. “‘Boss, I should have seen this coming,’ he said. He showed me the day’s Drudge Report headline on the Web: ‘Eyewitness: Sec of State Condi Rice laughs it up at Spamalot while Gulf Coast lays in tatters’.

“I sat there kicking myself for having been so tone-deaf,” she adds. “I was the highest-ranking black in the administration and a key adviser to the President. What had I been thinking?”

Miss Rice flew south to visit victims. She admits that Mr Bush’s team made “many missteps, both in perception and in reality” – and that she told him: “Clearly we have a race problem” – but robustly rejects claims that his response was influenced by prejudice.

“It was so unfair, cynical, and irresponsible,” she writes. Many commentators point to Katrina as the turning point in Mr Bush’s presidency and say that his approval ratings never recovered.

In an interview with the magazine on Monday Miss Rice also claims that Mr Bush’s decision to invade Iraq under his “freedom agenda” facilitated the revolutions of this year’s Arab Spring.

“There is both a moral case and a practical one for the proposition that no man, woman or child should live in tyranny,” she said. “Those who excoriate the approach as idealistic or unrealistic missed the point. In the long run, it is authoritarianism that is unstable and unrealistic”.

In her memoir Miss Rice also details the long-renowned feuds she had with Dick Cheney, the Vice President, and Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, over Iraq and the handling of terror suspects. She describes being undermined by them both and by Mr Bush, and discloses that at one stage she threatened to resign.

Dispersants used in New Zealand spill “more harmful than the oil itself”

OIL SLICK: There is concern about the effects on the environment of using dispersant to break up oil from the stranded ship Rena.

Dispersants ‘worse than oil’

Stuff | Oct 11, 2011

by MICHELLE COOKE

The dispersants being used to break up the hundreds of tonnes of oil leaking from the grounded Rena could be “more harmful than the oil itself”.

Maritime New Zealand (MNZ) has used Corexit 9500 to help break up the oil, but University of Southampton oceanography lecturer Dr Simon Boxall said using dispersants could cause unnecessary harm.

The UK banned the use of Corexit dispersants in 1998 and Sweden has a blanket ban on all dispersants in the marine environment, Boxall said.

“In their raw form some dispersants can be very toxic and I believe will do more harm than good,” he said.

“They are more harmful than the oil itself and they are not less toxic than dishwashing liquid.

“Dishwashing liquid doesn’t carry hazchem advice and you don’t wear protective clothing and masks to do the washing up. In this case – with limited knowledge of the region – I’d advise caution on use of dispersants.”

But Environment Minister Nick Smith said Corexit was no more toxic than dishwashing liquid and had been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency.

He said at least 1800 litres of the chemical dispersant had been used with variable results.

In New Zealand, Corexit can be used in sea water but not fresh water.

Boxall has studied the Erika oil spill on France’s Brittany coast in 1999 and the MV Braer oil spill in the Shetland Islands in 1993.

He said oil broke up naturally after the Erika oil spill and “little human intervention took place”.

He estimated last night that it should take between four and six weeks for the oil to be naturally dispersed.

But another 300 tonnes have since leaked into the ocean, which means the natural process could take longer.

He said the stormy weather was “both a pro and con”. While it hindered the salvage operation, it would also help disperse the oil.

MNZ started using Corexit last week to disperse the oil from the Rena, but was also looking at using alternative dispersants.

National on scene commander Rob Service said last week that despite initial indications that dispersant testing had proved effective, further analysis had confirmed Corexit was not dispersing the oil.

MNZ said on its website chemical dispersants were an “important option” and should always be considered in the most effective “first stage” of the response strategy.

A spokesperson for MNZ said results from a trial of Corexit on Thursday and Friday proved inconclusive and while it planned to use it this morning, the weather hindered that operation.

Corexit is dispersed from the air, but it was too cloudy to fly today.

Helicopters have been on standby all day, waiting for a break in the weather so spraying could continue.

The chemical only worked on fresh oil and would not work on oil that had been in the ocean for more than three or four hours.

“If it’s still coming out tomorrow then we’ll continue to use it,” the spokesperson said.

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) research scientist Professor Nic Bax, who leads the Biodiversity Hub at the University of Tasmania, said nature would play its part but dispersants could also be helpful in breaking up the oil.

“Dispersants used to be quite toxic but now are considered to be much less toxic than the oil itself, so the main environmental decision regarding their use is determining where the oil will have least harm.”

“Spilt oil that remains at the surface will gradually be dispersed by natural physical processes at least in high energy environments. Oil that reaches low energy environments or gets buried in sediments may persist for several years.”

The University of Houston in Texas is currently researching new types of dispersants which are more environmentally friendly.

PositiveID receives microchip implant order for Israeli Military

PositiveID Corporation Receives VeriChip Order for Use With Israeli Military

The VeriChip can be used to assist in the management of emergency situations and disaster recovery in conjunction with a customized camera capable of receiving both RFID scanned data and GPS data wirelessly.

marketwatch.com | Oct 11, 2011

DELRAY BEACH, Fla., Oct 11, 2011 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) — PositiveID Corporation (“PositiveID” or “Company”) PSID +13.33% , a developer of medical technologies for diabetes management, clinical diagnostics and bio-threat detection, announced today that it has received an order for its VeriChip(TM) microchip to be used for disaster preparedness and emergency management in Israel by an integration partner.

The VeriChip radio frequency identification (RFID) microchip was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2004 for patient identification. The VeriChip can also be used to assist in the management of emergency situations and disaster recovery in conjunction with a customized camera capable of receiving both RFID scanned data and GPS data wirelessly, and a Web-enabled database for gathering and storing information and images captured during emergency response operations.

Related

About a month after Rabin’s appointment, PositiveID announced it had received an order from a partner in Israel for the supply of VeriChip electronic chips that are used for patient identification in emergency situations. This partner, said the company statement, intends to supply the chips to the IDF. Yuval Rabin declined to be interviewed or to comment on his business dealings.

The Company’s integration partner intends to provide the microchips to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), the State of Israel’s military force.

Marc Poulshock, PositiveID’s Vice President of Business Development, said, “We believe there are many important applications for the VeriChip and our associated intellectual property including next-generation identification and bio-sensing capabilities. Our partner is looking to help healthcare organizations, militaries including the IDF, and governments with their disaster preparedness and emergency response needs.”

About PositiveID Corporation

PositiveID Corporation develops unique medical devices and molecular diagnostic systems, focused primarily on diabetes management, rapid medical testing and airborne bio-threat detection. Its wholly-owned subsidiary, MicroFluidic Systems, is focused on the development of microfluidic systems for automated preparation of and performance of biological assays.

Statements about PositiveID’s future expectations, including the likelihood that the VeriChip will be used for disaster preparedness and emergency management in Israel by an integration partner; the likelihood that the VeriChip can also be used to assist in the management of emergency situations and disaster recovery in conjunction with a customized camera capable of receiving both RFID scanned data and GPS data wirelessly, and a Web-enabled database for gathering and storing information and images captured during emergency response operations; the likelihood that the Company’s integration partner intends to provide the microchips to the IDF; the likelihood that the Company’s partner is looking to help healthcare organizations, militaries including the IDF, and governments with their disaster preparedness and emergency response needs; and all other statements in this press release other than historical facts are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and as that term is defined in the Private Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and are subject to change at any time, and PositiveID’s actual results could differ materially from expected results. These risks and uncertainties include the Company’s ability to successfully deliver the VeriChip to its integration partner and the ability of the integration partner to provide the VeriChip to the IDF; as well as certain other risks. Additional information about these and other factors that could affect the Company’s business is set forth in the Company’s various filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including those set forth in the Company’s 10-K filed on March 25, 2011, and 10-Qs filed on May 13, 2011, and August 15, 2011, under the caption “Risk Factors.” The Company undertakes no obligation to update or release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this statement or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law.

Danziger Bridge killings: Judge delays hearing to reduce ex-cop’s sentence

AP | Sep 28, 2011  

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal judge has postponed a hearing on a bid to reduce an eight-year prison sentence for a former police officer who pleaded guilty to helping cover up deadly shootings of unarmed residents on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.

U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance postponed Wednesday’s hearing until Oct 5.

The hearing was on the Justice Department’s recommendation to cut Michael Hunter’s prison sentence to five years.

Bobbi Bernstein, who headed up the prosecution in the case, asked for the postponement so she could attend. Bernstein must travel from the Washington D.C. for the hearing.

In December, Vance sentenced Hunter to the maximum prison term for pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy and misprision of a felony.

The shootings on the Danziger Bridge killed two people and wounded four others less than a week after the 2005 storm. Hunter was a government witness in the trial of five other current or former officers, who were convicted last month of civil rights charges.

Dispersants Used in BP Gulf Oil Spill Linked to Cancer

ens-newswire.com | Aug 26, 2011

A plane sprays dispersant over the oil leaked from the BP wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico, May 21, 2010. (Photo by Daniel Beltra courtesy Greenpeace)

WASHINGTON, DC, August 26, 2011 (ENS) – Five of the 57 ingredients in dispersants approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for use on oil spills are linked to cancer, finds a new research report based on data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by environmental groups on the Gulf of Mexico.

The report from Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, along with Toxipedia Consulting Services, is based on material released by the U.S. EPA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by Earthjustice on behalf of the Gulf Restoration Network and the Florida Wildlife Federation.

Dispersants are used to clean up oil spills and contain chemicals that break up oil into smaller droplets and move the oil from the surface of the water into the water column.

Two oil dispersant products were used heavily in the BP oil leak: COREXIT 9500 and 9527, both produced by Nalco/Exxon. BP used over 1.8 million gallons of dispersant during the three-month long oil leak that gushed 4.9 million barrels of crude oil from the Macondo well located about 40 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast.

The report “The Chaos of Clean-Up: Analysis of Potential Health and Environmental Impacts of Chemicals in Dispersant Products” highlights the fact that some dispersants are safer than others.

“The testing can’t be done in the moment of the disaster,” said Marianne Engelman Lado, an attorney with Earthjustice. “It has to be done ahead of time to avoid the chaos we witnessed during the disaster response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.”

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Fukushima disaster: residents may never return to their radiation-hit homes

Residents from a village near the Fukushima nuclear plant are checked for radiation exposure after returning briefly to their homes to collect belongings. Photograph: Koichi Kamoshida/EPA

Japanese government will admit for first time that radiation levels will be too high to allow many evacuees to return home

guardian.co.uk | Aug 22, 2011

by Justin McCurry, in Tokyo

Residents who lived close to the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant are to be told their homes may be uninhabitable for decades, according to Japanese media reports.

The Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan, is expected to visit the area at the weekend to tell evacuees they will not be able to return to their homes, even if the operation to stabilise the plant’s stricken reactors by January is successful.

Kan’s announcement will be the first time officials have publicly recognised that radiation damage to areas near the plant could make them too dangerous to live in for at least a generation, effectively meaning that some residents will never return to them.

A Japanese government source is quoted in local media as saying the area could be off-limits for “several decades”. New data has revealed unsafe levels of radiation outside the 12-mile exclusion zone, increasing the likeliness that entire towns will remain unfit for habitation.

The exclusion zone was imposed after a series of hydrogen explosions at the plant following the earthquake and tsunami in March.

The government had planned to lift the evacuation order and allow 80,000 people back into their homes inside the exclusion zone once the reactors had been brought under control. Several thousand others living in random hotspots outside the zone have also had to relocate.

However, in a report issued over the weekend the science ministry projected that radiation accumulated over one year at 22 of 50 tested sites inside the exclusion zone would easily exceed 100 millisieverts, five times higher than the safe level advised by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. “We can’t rule out the possibility that there will be some areas where it will be hard for residents to return to their homes for a long time,” said Yukio Edano, chief cabinet secretaryand face of the government during the disaster. “We are very sorry.”

Edano refused to say which areas were on the no-go list or how long they would remain uninhabitable, adding that a decision would be made after more radiation tests have been conducted.

The government has yet to decide how to compensate the tens of thousands of residents and business owners who will be forced to start new lives elsewhere. The state has hinted that it may buy or rent land from residents in unsafe areas, although it has not ruled out trying to decontaminate them.

Futaba and Okuma, towns less than two miles from the Fukushima plant, are expected to be among those on the blacklist. The annual cumulative radiation dose in one district of Okuma was estimated at 508 millisieverts, which experts believe is high enough to increase the risk of cancer. More than 300 households from the two towns will be allowed to return briefly to their homes next week to collect belongings. It will be the first time residents have visited their homes since the meltdown.

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, is working to bring the three crippled reactors and four overheating spent fuel pools to a safe state known as “cold shutdown” by mid-January.

Last week the company estimated that leaks from all three reactors had dropped significantly over the past month.

But signs of progress at the plant have been tempered by widespread contamination of soil, trees, roads and farmland.

Experts say that while health risks can be lowered by measures including the removal of layers of topsoil, vulnerable groups such as pregnant women and children should avoid even minimal exposure.

“Any exposure would pose a health risk, no matter how small,” Hiroaki Koide, a radiation specialist at Kyoto University, told Associated Press. “There is no dose that we should call safe.”

Any government admission that residents will not be able to return to their homes will be closely monitored in Japan.

Suspicions persist that the authorities privately acknowledged this situation several months ago. In April, Kenichi Matsumoto, a senior adviser to the cabinet, quoted Kan as saying that people would not be able to live near the plant for “10 to 20 years”. Matsumoto later claimed to have made the remark himself.