CRISISBOOM

The effects of the disaster that poured millions and millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico last spring will have global ramifications, a Gulf Coast activist recently warned.

“What’s been done in the Gulf is going to eventually affect every single American citizen,” Kindra Arnesen told Project Gulf Impact in a recent interview.

She continued, “This is still going to go global because as the economy and the United States goes under the sledgehammer… the rest of the world is going to feel it.”

“This isn’t just about the United States. This isn’t just about the Gulf Coast. This is about a whole planet because one hand washes the other,” she added.

Arnesen, a South Louisiana mother who with BP’s invitation toured areas devastated by the Macondo Well explosion, described the negative health effects to which she and others, including oil spill clean up crews, were exposed around the Gulf Coast.

One such crew she encountered had brown spots on their bodies. Her friend on the same crew currently has bruising across her stomach, she said.

“It didn’t look like someone punched her in the stomach,” Arnesen explained. “It looked like the blood vessels underneath the skin surface were literally breaking and the blood was slowly coming to the surface.”

“People are getting sick all over the Gulf Coast,” she added. “If people who live here can get sick, then people who come here can very well get sick.”

Arnesen also noted that the chemicals used in the clean up are known to make animals sterile.

“We’re not that much different than a species in the Gulf,” she said, taking into account the area’s children.

According to the coastal zone director of Plaquemine Parish, the oil spread across the Louisiana shoreline after the well was capped in September from 287 miles in July to 320 miles in late November.

“The government does not have a plan,” Arnesen said. “BP is about to pull the response efforts out of the gulf. We’ve got to step up to the plate and say something.”

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