Oil spills, worldwide

It ain’t just a prob in the Gulf Coast

By Culinate staff

July 23, 2010

Maybe you thought that this spring’s BP Gulf oil spill was an anomaly? Think again; as a recent reprint on Grist noted, more oil is carelessly spilled in Nigeria each year than has been gushed so far in the Gulf of Mexico. And because Nigeria ain’t exactly the First World, cleanup efforts are sketchy at best:

Though the local inhabitants are still there, struggling for survival . . . they can’t depend on fishing anymore. “The last time I went there, there was a little boy who came with a plastic container . . . [He and his father had gone] to look for shrimps all night. And what they came back with was a paltry quantity of crayfish that could barely cover the bottom of the plastic container . . . The container was covered with crude and the crayfish itself was covered in crude oil. So I was wondering what they were going to do with it, and he said they were going to wash the crayfish, and then they would feed on it.”

That is if, as writer Ellen Cantarow notes, the kid survives the toxic environment of living, eating, and immersing in so much oil.