Opposing Olfactory Observations On #Oilspill

With all due respect to my friends who say they smell the #oilspill, I'm not sure that's what you're smelling.

Bear with me here, please. I'm not saying y'all are a bunch of psychosomatic wackos. Indeed, many of y'all are feckin nuts, but for a myriad of other reasons. I firmly believe you're smelling oil, but consider:

• "Oil awareness" is at an all-time high. Just going to the gas station and smelling the fumes from the pump bums me out. I can see the same thing happening to others when an oil-burning older car goes by, someone cuts their grass with a cheap lawnmower, you name it.
• Refineries. BP down at Jesuit Bend, Chalmette, Norco. We've been surrounded by oil smells all our lives here. Maybe "oil awareness" is heightening things you've smelled all along?
• Crude vs. Refined. Have any of you ever smelled unrefined/crude oil? It's not the same as the various petroleum products you live with daily.
• Chemical Plants. If you think the refineries are bad, the chemical plants like Cytec and Monsanto make some really nasty shit.
• Wind/weather patterns. NOLA has variable winds on a daily basis. The oil spill started 90 miles off the LA Coast, and that coast is 80-90 miles (as the crow flies) from the metro area. The reports of oil smells down the bayou aren't even consistent enough to conclude that fumes are making their way this far north in quantity.

There are two reasons I bring this topic up. First, some of you are making yourselves miserable over this. I firmly believe you're smelling something, but I don't think it's as serious as you make it out to be. I hate to see people I admire and respect worrying themselves to death.

Second, I don't see where this olfactory freak-out serves any common good. Air quality? Public health? C'mon, three refineries and Shell Polypropylene in the region, our air quality was shit before 22-April. Cancer issues? Anyone who is fighting lung cancer and lives in NOLA has made a lifestyle choice that this oil spill is not threatening any more than the existing problems.

Some of you may think the people complaining, like this McClelland woman, are doing the Lord's Work on the spill, but if they make New Orleans look like an eco-apocalypse, what little business and economic development we have left will be destroyed.