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TEXAS GULF ALERT TO SAY AWAY, 4.2 MILLION POISONED DEAD FISH, MILD RELIEF
Deborah Dupre , Human Rights Examiner
Neurotoxic shellfish poisoning (NSP) threatening human health along Texas Gulf Coast prompted Texas Department of Health to warn people to stay away from the Gulf area from Brownsville through Galveston where 4.2 million have been killed in the ongoing great Gulf die-off and to not eat the shellfish from there, a situation slightly relieved after a cold front Thursday blew toxins south according to Texas Park and Wildlife.
"Staff of Padre Island National Seashore continue to find coyotes that are sick or dead, possibly from ingesting fish killed by the brevetoxin. Aerosols are light to nonexistent along South Padre Island despite moderate cell concentrations," Texas Park and Wildlife reported Thursday.
Texas Department of State Health Services has banned commercial and recreational harvesting of shellfish in the area of the 4.2 million fish die-off and warned the public to stay away from the Gulf area to avoid neurotoxin shellfish poisoning. Since then, updates are hard to find in other news sources.
Victims of neurotoxic shellfish poisoning "have been frequently hospitalised with symptoms including nausea, vomiting and slurred speech."
This form of food poisoning can lead to dizziness and tingling sensations throughout a victim’s body and in rare severe cases, paralysis and difficulty breathing that can result in a fatality.
PubMed Central says that neurotoxic shellfish also results in paresthesias (numbness, tingling, or a "pins and needles" feeling) of the mouth, lips and tongue plus distal paresthesias.
The Texas health warning says, "Oysters can be toxic without any indication of red tide such as discolored waters, respiratory irritation or dead fish. People are also advised not to harvest and eat whelks from Texas waters as these species also accumulate toxin from the red tide organism."
The latest mass fish die-off has been attributed to extreme heat causing extreme red tide in the area plagued not only by Big Oil's crude and Corexit, but also by Big Ag's oxygen-depleting algae blooms, fed by fertilizer runoff from Midwestern farm fields that produce aquatic dead zones -- water that cannot support sea life.
Oil is still gushing into the region, in some areas, as deadly as immediately after the spill, and Corexit is still being used to secretly carpet bomb.
Nov. 9, 2011