The Crabb’s oil dump, currently under investigation, is but a symptom of the illegal dumping of used motor oil that has been going on here for decades and failure to take immediate action to clean up and prevent its continuance could have fatal consequences for the country.
This is the opinion of marine biologist John Mussington who noted that the toxic waste could, in time, make its way into the food chain through the ground water and could have grave repercussions for generations to come.
“The effects are many and the repercussions serious,” Mussington told The Daily OBSERVER. “You have to look at it from the point of view of what is contained in the used motor oil. …”
According to the expert, while the initial levels might not produce any significant symptoms, the build-up over time could manifest in “an increase of birth defects and all kind of exotic illnesses in the next generation …”
He cited, as an example, the fishing village of Minamata, Japan, where many years ago an accumulation of mercury in the food chain claimed over 2,000 lives and “after a generation or two, people started having babies without eyes, without brains, without feet and so on.”
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warns that it only takes one gallon of oil to contaminate up to a million gallons of drinking water. That is one reason why Mussington insisted that “something has to be done and it has to come policy-wise from government in terms of strong environmental legislation to prevent or halt these things coming into our environment now.”
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