Just to be clear, it is NOT safe to swim on beaches contaminated with crude oil. Even if a beach isn’t closed, if you see oil balls or tar get off the beach. Crude oil contains toxic chemicals that easily pass through skin and lungs to damage cells, cause cancer and even alter DNA. This is serious, folks.
Healthy Child Healthy World recently posted “Why Are Children Swimming in the Gulf?” Unfortunately, uniformed or misinformed people are swimming with oil and allowing children to play in sand littered with oil balls. Because conditions change rapidly, the beach may be fine when you arrive and polluted 2 hours later. Authorities are being lax about closing beaches, since the Gulf economy relies on tourism.
If you’d like to see the sad reality firsthand, here is a video from June 23rd, shot in Destin Beach, FL.
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