Canadian newspaper tests NO's water: "Wading into an E. coli stew"

[rainbow4321]

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1126995010871&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

The Star brought back five water samples from New Orleans — scooped up at city hall, the Iberville projects and points along Canal St. — for testing at a Toronto lab. The results found E. coli levels between 5,600 and 42,000 per 100 ml of water and staph levels ranging from 9,800 to 32,000 per 100 ml of water.


To put the results in more significant context, it should be noted that Toronto's board of health posts no-swimming advisories for the city's public beaches when E. coli levels reach 100 per 100 ml because of the health risk.

There are at least five oil spills in the New Orleans area and 121 sites with known chemical contamination. At minimum, three of the city's poisonous "Superfund sites" — meaning they made the list of the nation's worst toxic sites — were flooded, including a landfill where residents dumped garbage for decades. That one remains underwater and inaccessible.

<snip>
The water — and the muck it's leaving behind — contains lead from paint and batteries; officials aren't even certain of the oozing sources. High levels of hexavalent chromium, which is used in industrial plating, and arsenic, used in treating wood, have also been found, the EPA reports.

[acmavm]

1. Don't worry, Halliburton is on the job.

.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. At this point I worry for the people who return home. It'll still

be a deathtrap.

[rainbow4321]

11. Deathtrap w/ no medical community to help them

And this comes from JACHO...if they don't Ok the buildings for rebuilding, there will be no hospitals..so then what...the make-shift tent medical clinics get to be overwhelmed yet again?? Unless chimp slips someone at JACHO or the HHS a few bills and they give the go ahead. **I** sure as hell would not want anything invasive done to me/my loved ones at these facilities any time soon!


http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/3358913

This city's health care facilities have been shattered to an extent unmatched in U.S. history, and its hospital system faces grave challenges as residents begin returning, the vice president of the national hospital accreditation organization said today.

The official, Joe Cappiello, said several hospitals were probably damaged beyond repair by Hurricane Katrina, while some may try to rush back into business before conditions are safe. Others, while rebuilding, may lose doctors and nurses to communities elsewhere.

"Essentially the health care infrastructure of New Orleans is gone — it no longer exists," said Cappiello, who just completed a three-day mission to the city along with a colleague from the Illinois-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations

Cappiello expressed concern that some hospitals, desperate to get back into business for competitive as well as public-service reasons, might move too quickly, before all mold and contaminants from the flooding are removed. "I hope there's someone looking at all the health care assets and making sound decisions as the mayor faces overwhelming political pressure to let people back in," Cappiello said. "The federal government needs to go in there and make sure the hospitals are a safe environment before they're reopened."

[GreenPartyVoter]

12. "Someone" had better not be some profiteering CEO who will cut corners

on quality and pocket the difference.. but I bet it will be.

[rainbow4321]

15. HCA ( as in Frist's family) has a few there...

including Tulane in downtown NO..so yeah, I could see it being open for business sooner rather than later.
Remember Tulane? Right across the street from Charity---the staff at Charity got to watch Tulane's less critical patients get evacuated first when Charity's extremely critical patients got to wait, and wait, and wait..for 5 days.

[MountainLaurel]

8. They had a half-page ad in today's WashPost

Right among the articles about hurricane survivors who have come home to find nothing left, or house where the mold is already overtaking areas that weren't flooded.

I came close to :puke:.

But after the controversy about the no-bid contracts, I'm not particularly surprised. I remember a couple years ago, right after they received a lot of bad press for their operations in Iraq, they started running TV ads. I nearly threw a textbook through my television, I was that appalled at the gall.

[Karenina]

2. Toxic gumbo.

[Lindacooks]

3. Ah yes, hexavalent chromium - made famous by Erin Brockovich

in the movie of the same name. Expect to see cancer rates soar in the next couple of years.

[rainbow4321]

10. Except those who were submerged in the toxic water/sludge

are now dispersed around the country. Se we may not be able to ever know when cancer/leukemia/birth defects/infertility stats increase. I say "when" instead of "if" because we know the numbers will spike.

I was thinking the other day, unlike the 9/11 survivors & families, this group may not have the resources/money/know-how to follow up on any of this or to keep themselves in the media..years from now will we even know how they are doing, where they are living <or dying>??

[SoCalDem]

13. Perhaps the rich folks in the "Garden District" will envy the poor

who left...in a few years..

I guess the real estate will be a bargain in some areas..if you don't mind having kids with leukemia and brain tumors:shrug:

[Spazito]

5. Very good read, imo

It is written by someone who was actually there, recounting the facts in a very credible way:

Every night during the time I spent in New Orleans, before relief convoys arrived, I used a facecloth and precious bottle of spring water (looted) to scrub my feet, applying antibiotic ointment (looted) on the scrapes and rashes and weird boils that resulted from wading shoeless in the bilge. Shoeless because both sandals and sneakers had quickly shredded with immersion.

This — the stuff that eats leather and canvas — is what people were living in, struggling through, in search of food and potable water, those who either stayed by stubborn choice or lacked the wherewithal to leave when levees were breached; Lake Pontchartrain surging over the pitifully feeble buffer, natural barriers and sponging wetlands destroyed long ago by coastal development and sluicing designed to protect ships.

Even now, three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck and with 22 repaired pumping stations suctioning millions of gallons a day out of the city — 40 per cent of which remains submerged — the dangers contained in that water have not subsided. And the sediment, the sludge, the "bacterial soup" left behind in a metropolis rendered a massive, pestilent, disease-breeding swamp, might actually be even more toxic than the receding floodwaters that are dropping by about 30 centimetres a day.

[FloridaPat]

6. Doctors treating people for chemical burns on their feet says it all.

Just think if NO had a nuclear power plant or been a nuclear waste dump.

[wellstone_democrat]

7. crazy socialist science!

Nonsense! If NO was dangerous in any way, our Lord God Bush* would tell us. This must be like that imaginary "global warming" and "evolution" stuff that nations who hate "freedom" make up to embarass U.S. When Karen Hughes hears about this we are going to invade Canada and make them stop using these "theories" that they call "science"

:sarcasm:

[ClintonTyree]

9. I've been discussing this point with...........

other parents of displaced students who went to Tulane U. Many say they'll check with the EPA and if they say it's safe they'll send their kids back. I pointed out that the EPA has become a more "faith based" organization since bush took over and that they cannot be trusted. Of course, I'm vilified, called a "doomsdayer", a "liar" and various and other sundry descriptive terms.
I always wondered how Republicans ever got elected in this country, now I know. They still think their government is looking out for their best interests and would never lie to them. :eyes:

[phusion]

14. Where does NOLA get their water?

Wells, or lakes, or what?

If this toxic soup finds its way into their water source, what kind of logistics problem would that present? Would they be able to treat the municipal water to remove this crap?