Special Report: West Virginia 3-prong poison coverup

“Our eggs are blue,” Charleston resident Scott MacMillan said. “And when we cracked one open, it smelled like licorice.” 

Scott’s chicken story gets worse. His chickens are fouling the roost with blue excrement for the first time.  Not only that, they are pecking each other like never before, he says. 

West Virginia eggs and bacon for breakfast, anyone? 

Those chickens are not the only ones displaying anger these days. Residents are outraged over the state’s inadequate response to this month’s chemical leak disaster.

Implications of drinking and bathing in tainted water are more than justifiably outrageous. 

Implications of smelling poison, breathing it, are equally concerning, yet hardly addressed. 

Implications of tainted water and air tainting the food chain, poisoning produce, poisoning ”organic” produce – are staggering for the state’s economy, yet unspoken. 

“It’s frightening, it really is frightening,” Marshall University environmental engineer Scott Simonton told a legislative committee Wednesday, ”What we know scares us — and we know there’s a lot more we don’t know.”

The “emergency response” to West Virginia’s chemical crisis and the subsequent coverup look more like another American crime against humanity each passing day.

Licorice ‘stink’ ’obvious’ consequences of every breath, breathing poisoned air: crime against humanity unfolding?

Are angry chickens suffering neurological damage from mystery chemicals consumed and breathed? Is neurological damage one many effects West Virginians can expect down the road? Who knows? 

“The water has been noted to be safe, per the water company. Having these symptoms — reactions — doesn’t necessarily mean it’s harmful,” said Dr. Rahul Gupta, chief officer for the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department said, even as people poured into doctor offices and hospitals with poisoning sympotms. 

“This is just something we’re seeing,” Gupta said. “It, too, shall pass.”

It has not passed. Furthermore, what people cannot see could be lethal. 

“Just because you can’t see it or smell it doesn’t mean it isn’t poisoning you, Dr. Riki Ott repeatedly told Gulf Coast residents after the 2010 Gulf oil catastrophe began.

Government hasn’t been testing various possibilities that independent scientists have. One thing, however, is certain: Aside from present human suffering and possible future consequences, such as untimely deaths from lack of potable water and untainted air, West Virginia’s latest chemical leak and government’s failure to protect its residents adequately also has implications regarding the state’s produce, the food locals eat and the food the state exports.

Another government action has been even worse. The government declared a water ban, sending hundreds of thousands Americans desperate for potable water to water distribution sites. The government lifted the ban, and a surge of emergency room patients occurred. Government continued, however, to claim the water was safe. CNN jumped in, exposing the government’s “safe water” myth.

Making matters worse, West Virginians filled containers with water provided at distribution centers where the military was involved in “helping.” Those residents would only later learn that water they’d been using was from the exact same source they were told to avoid, according to Dr. Andrew Whelton, an environmental engineer from University of South Alabama.

Whelton drove to West Virginia with a research team soon after the leak to obtain water samples for testing.

Upon arrival, Whelton’s team discovered a dire cry for humanitarian aid. They are helping as many residents as humanly possible to do what the federal and state governments have failed to provide.

Whelton’s research team includes Kevin White, Keven Kelley, Matt Connell, Jeff Gill, Lakia McMillan, Maryam Salehi. They have aided residents to complete a safe flushing process, using crucially important guidelines, unlike those the state and private corporation controlling residents’ water, West Virginia American,  told people to do.

Whelton explained the sad state of affairs in West Virginia to a volunteer, Kryta Bryson from Ohio, as seen in her video below: West Virginia Water Crisis: Exclusive *Crucial* Information about Flushing.

Meanwhile, government continues failing to advise people that they are breathing poison. Not only that, they are telling people the air is safe and is not causing their poisoning symptoms.

Three local schools on Friday reported elevated levels of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or MCHM. No amount is safe or should be there, according to independent scientists. Kanawha County school officials said that schools’ water systems would be flushed again this weekend. What have those children been breathing? Are government-provided monitors recording toxins at the schools?  No.

Humanitarian Merle Savage would undoubtedly say West Virginia officials are doing the same jig she saw during the Exxon Valdez disaster and the Gulf of Mexico crime against humanity.

Savage was poisoned while working in the Exxon Valdez crisis “cleanup.” Government refused to advise that those workers were being poisoned with every breath they took.

“That is what I called the Dance of Deliberate Deception,” Savage asserted during early stages of the BP oil and Nalco Corexit poisoning. “No one will come forward with the intestinal fortitude, and declare the obvious – that crude oil is toxic to breathe.”  (Vampire of Macondo)

A year after the Obama//BP/Nalco coverup began, while advocating for millions of poisoned cleanup workers and Gulf Coast residents, poisoning killed Savage.

When Scott MacMillan and his wife Jody learned Freedom Industries’ chemical tank leaked, they shut off the water to the house and waited until the private water corporation gave an all-clear to flush pipes (and the evidence), as officials directed residents to do.

“I followed the water company’s instructions to the letter,” Scott said, “but running the hot water made the whole house stink like licorice.”

Dr. Yuri Gorby explained why government’s instructions for flushing intensified poisoning to Before It’s News on Day 9 of the crisis. Especially hot water releases toxins in vapors, intensifying poisoning the people. (Scientists Blow Lid Off Why ERs SURGING As WV Water Ban Lifts)

Thursday marked three weeks since Freedom Industries and W,V, government admitted a chemical was oozing a poison into 300,000 West Virginians’ water supply and air. West Virginia’s corporate government, however, continued failing to protect its residents. 

It took an independent research team to reveal this week that residents are being exposed to formaldehyde. (See: Bombshell: ‘You’re bathing in, breathing formaldehyde,’ West Virginians told)

Smelling poison means being poisoned

“People need to understand that smells can trigger [reactions],” Dr. Gupta said, dismissing, or covering up, the fact that smelling poison means being poisoned. 

“It still smells like licorice,” Charleston author and historian resident Stan Bumgardner told Dupré in an email this week. “Right now, the licorice smell coming from the taps is still extremely strong in some houses–more so with the hot water.” (Author’s emphasis)

Smelling poison means inhaling it. Officials have allowed 300,000 to inhale poison for over three weeks. Officials have not offered evacuation. Nor have they offered to place monitors in houses to detect poison levels. 

“I can’t believe they aren’t doing this,” said  Dr. Whelton. “These issues aren’t being addressed.”

The emergency response to the W.V. chemical crisis looks more like another American crime against humanity each passing day.

“Long-term consequences of this spill are not being addressed,” Whelton said. 

Some home water systems “appear” to be clearing faster than others, but appearances can be deceiving, according to toxicologist Dr. Riki Ott, who advocated for Gulf Coast residents in the BP catastrophe aftermath in which she’d said at least four million people were poisoned. (Vampire of Macondo)

“Just because you can’t smell a poison does not mean you aren’t being poisoned,” Ott and other toxicologists warned throughout the height of the BP-Nalco poisoning in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Macondo Prospect catastrophe.

Nevertheless, the West Virginia crisis focus has been poisoned water, not poisoned air, much less food.

Like most West Virginians this reporter has interviewed, Bumgardner distrusts the water, regardless of what government officials are saying. Trusting the air breathed with every breath, however, is unspoken – aside from, “The air stinks.”

“I personally won’t trust the tap water again for a long time, if ever,” Bumgardner said.  “I’m showering in the water again, but not drinking, cooking, cleaning, or brushing my teeth with it. Some friends are still not using it even to shower.”

A hot shower produces vapors. In the West Virginia poisoning case, those vapors have proved to be toxic. Unless the sticky poison is completely rid in the system, those vapors carry toxins that are breathed.

Bumgardner’s friends are among those who’ve rigged a makeshift camp shower and are using bottled water or tap or well water brought in from other locations, he said. Pilgrimages to clean water sites were being held, Mountain Party leader Jesse Johnson told Before It’s News last week. 

Finally, after three weeks of government ending clean water distribution and a subsequent public outcry, Gov. Tomblin announced Thursday he’d restart the emergency water distribution.

This is not the first time West Virginians have been left in the dark about a chemical leak emergency impacting them.

“Back in September,” Bumgardner said, “another chemical leak went unreported for more than two hours.” 

“We have a lot of chemicals in this valley that are a lot more deadly, and instantly lethal, than the ones released on the 9th.

Examples, he said, include chlorine and ammonia. Even independent scientists, however, report that exactly what and how many poisons are in West Virginia’s air and water remain unknown, and what is know is frightening.

“If we would have a major release of these with the same type of government response, there could be tens of thousands of people dead before anyone even knew what was happening,” Bumgardner said this week. “As far as I am aware, no government official has come forward since the accident to say how the response will be different next time.” 

Andrew Whelton, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at the University of Southern Alabama and part of a research team testing water in the area, thinks the MacMillan’s eggs are unique.

“They were certainly odd looking,” Whelton said Tuesday. “They’re not all blue, but it’s there in splotches. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Whelton’s research dropped one of the latest bombshells about poisoning of the area. Late Wednesday, officials responded to his testimony about his team’s evidence that formaldehyde is in the water — among other yet to be determined chemicals that government is not even testing. [Read: Bombshell: You're Bathing In, Breathing Formaldehyde, West Virginians Told]

Rather than doing what government scientists are doing – only testing MCHM – Whelton’s team have been looking at what else could be in “Crude MCHM,” as Dr. Gorby has explained to Before It’s News.

Whatever “it” is, implications of this angry chicken story are staggering: It’s in the water. It’s in the air. It’s in the food chain.

This is not only a one-state event.

“It” could be coming to your home next.

Sources: Los Angeles Times, Business Indsider, Charleston Gazette, CNN,