A Common Denominator: Questions For Obama's Administration

As a hematologist, I had many patients with severe, life-threatening blood malignancies, such as acute myeloid leukemia. I also consulted on patients with less advanced blood and bone marrow disorders of the type which predicted "there is a high likelihood that this person's bone marrow has been severely injured and will eventually develop leukemic changes".  There was a startlingly common denominator: even with extensive and repeated history-taking, most of the patients could not provide a history of toxic exposure which might have damaged their bone marrow.  Sometimes their occupations shed light on a petrochemical cause: commercial painters, workers (often undocumented immigrants working for construction contractors) who crawled under houses to spray for insects, farmers who worked land that had been contaminated by the dumping of insecticides years earlier), shoe-makers,  and artists using oil-based patients and solvents. But even homemakers with no commercial exposure to high levels of petrochemical based products came to my examining room with the story that they had "sprayed"  in a closed area (their homes' crawl-spaces) to rid their homes of destructive or annoying insect pests. Sometimes children who lived in residential communities not far from what we later learned was toxic industrial contamination of local water supplies presented with fatal acute leukemias. In each and every case, the person affected lacked information which would have aided him, her or parents to accept or avoid a life-threatening toxic exposure.

As I listen to the story of BP and the oceanic flood of raw oil contaminating the ocean, shore and coastal environment, I find it disturbing that there is no reliable information coming from the federal government about the level of highly toxic oil-based environmental contaminants to which adults and children are being exposed every day on the streets, at work,  in their homes and in their schools.  Why is this information not being obtained and distributed to the media for public knowledge?  How are people in the areas affected to know whether they and their families are being exposed to a high risk of bone marrow damage from raw oil and its airborne fumes?

This is serious business.  The Obama administration needs to treat its citizens as sensible adults and not dummies. The Obama administration should give the people facts about the very real and serious exposure to toxic materials spewing  from BP's disastrous oil well and let the people decide what is in their - and their families' - best interests. Should there be evacuation of entire shoreline communities? Should hospitals be gearing-up for an eventual flood of patients with petroleum-based bone marrow toxic effects, such as acute myeloid leukemia? Or is BP's calamity truly benign?

Have our public health authorities been gagged or do they just not know? And is finding out and disseminating information about toxic exposure a high priority or have the massive political contributions of the petroleum industry set the priorities to favor industry concerns over citizens' welfare?