(migraine…pardon my faux pas)

They ought to take this three-story, one-block long pile of coke and dump it on the Koch’s front lawn.  And for every shipment afterward, dumped on every Tea Party supporter’s front lawn who denies the pollution coming from oil and its byproducts.

More here on the residents’ concerns.  Same stonewalling over health concerns for residents living around this poison.  They say they’re sending in samples to find out if it’s hazardous.  Here’s the Material Data Safety Sheet (MSDS) on Petroleum Coke.  It’s pretty evident from this that it IS a serious health concern.   One of the warnings is not to breathe the dust.  Wonder how many residents breathe in particulate every single freaking day?

From the sheet:

Inhalation of excessive dust concentrations may be irritating to the upper respiratory

system. Repeated chronic inhalation exposure may cause impaired lung function.

There is no evidence that such exposures cause pneumoconiosis, carcinogenicity,

or other chronic health effects.

Anybody wanna bet this is located in a poor neighborhood in Detroit?

So…now BP wants to start operations for processing this filthy sludge in Whiting, Indiana, which is near Gary and Hammond  and Chicago….right on Lake Michigan. Um-hmmm…Anybody wanna guess if the toxic environment is a factor in Gary Indiana being the murder capital of the United States.  Note the article stating this area is one of the worst in air quality in the U.S.

And here we have the latest in *cough* BP cares….about our profits over your health and safety…

More here.

A video of yet another explosion in Whiting, Indiana:

Indiana has a sad history of putting business over its environment.  Just look at the lack of trees compared to, say, Ohio.  You can actually tell the air quality difference once you leave Indiana and venture into Ohio.  Nevermind the beauty of all the trees, but the air is breathable.  Anyway, Indiana’s own Dept. of Environmental Management *cough* has told manufacturers several years ago that once they were given a good report, they could slack off, er I mean, they could continue their good environmental practices until the IDEM inspected them three years later.

The Indiana Dunes, which we used to go to nearly every summer, have been polluted by the lack of concern of the environment.  Lake Michigan was once reasonably clean.  I took my kids up there after many years and was depressed to see the condition of the water.  It was no longer clear and had that polluted look to it.  I saw nuclear cooling towers off to my left.  At least, I thought they were nuclear cooling towers…turns out they were from another power plant–the one thing Indiana has going for it is that we don’t have nuclear power plants here.  I don’t hold my breath that they won’t eventually appear, especially with Mike Pence and the ALEC team now in charge here.  Besides, there are nuclear plants in Illinois and Ohio bordering our state, so…yeah…we’re still susceptible to nuclear radiation or the China Syndrome.  All it would take is one of the reactors melting down and we’re done.

And then there’s the curious case of radiation in Delaware,  Indiana that is mentioned in this blog.