ABCDE


HEALTH SCIENCE “


& PSYCHOLOGY


In the mood Cherchez l’amour! French study shows the effect of


background music on picking up dates. E3


INSURING YOUR HEALTH


If the eldery can’t go to the doctor . . . . . . the doctor can go to the elderly, under a pilot Medicare program. E2


EXERCISE


Now you go out and see a group of chimps and there’s always a couple of tourists with a guide.” Jane Goodall, E3


THE BP DISASTER: 84 DAYS AND COUNTING here happened Why it


Gulf seafood must pass the smell test


Government trains inspectors to sniff out contaminated catch


by Ylan Q. Mui and David A. Fahrenthold


pascagoula, miss. — Expert sniffer Steve Wilson lifted the cover off a Pyrex bowl and fanned the aroma of the raw red snapper sitting inside it toward him on a recent afternoon at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s lab here. He quickly replaced the cover and stepped back, letting the scent register for a few seconds. Conclusion: No oil. Wilson, chief quality officer for NOAA’s seafood inspection program, oversees a panel of seven olfactory experts from the agency and the Food and Drug Adminis- tration who have been tasked with ensur- ing that seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is safe to eat. The team also will help de- termine when the thousands of square miles of federal waters that have been closed to commercial fishing since the BP oil spill nearly three months ago can be reopened. This puts the fate of the seafood indus-


try in their hands. Or, rather, their noses. “It’s a very specialized skill set,” Wilson


said. He later added, “There are people who just can’t smell.” Members of the team — whose identi-


ties NOAA has kept secret, for fear they could become targets if waters do not re- open quickly, allowing fishing to resume —do not work alone. Seafood that passes the smell test also is subjected to chem- ical analysis at a NOAA lab in Seattle for traces of the hydrocarbons that make up the crude oil gushing into the gulf. But those tests can take at least three to


five days to complete, while so-called “ex- pert sensory assessors” can sniff through as many as 36 samples each day and de- tect contaminants down to one part per million. All seven have to sniff and rate each sample. Wilson said the sniffers are accurate about 80 percent of the time. NOAA said it is focusing most of its tests on seafood outside closed waters to


They may fit, but will they flop? Podiatrist discusses claims that toning sandals will shape your legs. E2


tuesday, july 13, 2010 E DM VA


DAVID RAE MORRIS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


Mike Voisin shows off a raw oyster in Houma, La. Only 3,000 of his 400,000 acres of oyster beds remain open.


ensure that it remains safe for consump- tion. No tainted seafood has been found in those areas, agency officials said. “So far, it’s adequate,” said Walt Dick-


hoff, who runs the chemical testing team in Seattle. “We’re just monitoring it to be certain.”


About 34 percent of the gulf has been closed to commercial fishing by federal order. States control waters nearer to shore, and Louisiana has shut down 76 percent of the 2.1 million acres of water where oysters are harvested, according to state officials. Officials with the state’s Department of


Health and Hospitals said the closures are their first line of defense against hav- ing contaminated seafood enter the mar- ket, but some fishermen — many of whom have been out of work for more than two months — have criticized the ef- forts as too aggressive. In Houma, La., Mike Voisin, owner of


seafood continued on E5


Fighting the spill turns life on the bayou blue


Oil floats on the surface near


Orange Beach, Ala., in a photo taken from a fishing boat being used in the cleanup.


KARI GOODNOUGH/BLOOMBERG


An unusual mix of geological factors created rich but dangerous reserves by Joel Achenbach


I


n the oil business, geologists tell stories. Here was a river, they will say. Here was a shallow sea. Here is where the sea dried up and left only salt. Here is where the sea formed anew, and widened, and deepened, and where sediments from another river, and the carcasses of microorganisms, were deposited, buried, baked, until finally — the enchanting payoff of the story if you’re an eager-beaver oil executive — the organic matter turned into oil. ¶ The Gulf of Mexico is full of such stories. Unfortunately, the story of one well, named Macondo, drilled by the rig Deepwater Horizon, has turned into a tragedy. ¶ The geology of the gulf


is pretty close to perfect for the creation of oil reservoirs. There are salt sheets and domes that form impermeable caps on oil fields. There are abundant rock formations that have been deformed into hump-shaped strata known as anticlines, natural traps for oil.


on washingtonpost.com More on the oil spill, pages E4-E6 The wildlife toll A disaster timeline How big is a barrel?


For continuous, comprehensive coverage of the disaster: washingtonpost.com/oilspill geology continued on E6


Less stress for some, but disruptions provoke a psychological crisis for others


by Ylan Q. Mui,


David A. Fahrenthold and Dana Hedgpeth


on bayou dufrene, la. — Aaron Cortez’s job is as small as the gulf oil spill is huge: His crew is supposed to track down pieces of oil-absorbing boom that have drifted away, and pull them back into position with metal hooks. It’s work. But for someone who en- joyed the self-reliance and independence of his old job catching bayou crabs, it’s nothing more than that. “Now you’re gonna see how boring our


job is,” Cortez, 21, said one Saturday af- ternoon. Ahead in the sweltering marsh, an errant piece of boom bobbed like a lost swimming-pool noodle. Cortez, who works for a contractor hired by BP, is part of a historic shift in employment that has altered the rhythms of daily life around the Gulf of Mexico. As the crews of local boats have been hired to help with the cleanup, thousands of men and women used to solitary, autonomous days on the water have become, in effect, low-level employ- ees of an oil company. For these crews — usually seen only in


long-range TV shots, faceless partici- pants in the gulf’s drama — working for BP can bring good pay and the pride of fighting the spill hand-to-hand. But for some it comes at a psychologi- cal cost: They have given up control of


JAMES STEINBERG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


their lives in exchange for hot days, be- wildering bureaucracy and a nagging sense that the oil is still winning. The toll for a few individuals has been extreme, as illustrated last month, when a char- ter-boat captain working for BP commit- ted suicide in Alabama. “We’re dealing with people who are


very resilient and used to being in charge of their own destiny. When that’s taken away, it creates an emotional and psy- chological crisis,” said Anthony Speier, deputy assistant secretary of Louisiana’s Office of Mental Health. In the days after the Deepwater Hori- zon drilling rig sank April 22, BP began hiring private boats to lay out contain- ment boom, spot globs of oil on the sur- face and test for oil below the water. Its best-known program, called “Vessels of


emotions continued on E5


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