1 So, it's been a scientific argument versus a regulatory argument 



2 as to why are you regulating that. Is there a relationship in the 



3 environment between mercury and cadmium and the barium levels, and is 



4 the mercury and cadmium bioavailable from the barite. 



5 In the abstract I mentioned some of the other work we did. Jerry 



6 Neff and some of the people at Battelle did some of the bioavailability 



7 work. 



8 We find that the mercury, for the most part, stays fairly 



9 insoluble and is, for the most part, not bioavailable. There is some 



10 bioavailability in the cadmium. That's a little bit more soluble out of 



11 the barite. Anyway, that's why the question is raised, do they covary. 



12 In other words, if you've got a lot of barium in the environment 



13 from the drilling, is the mercury elevated significantly. So, that's 



14 why the question is asked and we're trying to answer that question. 



15 DR. COOPER: That's an impressive volume of data that you've got. 



16 I'd like to ask sort of a devil's advocate question. So, what? What 



17 effect does this have on the marine life there and the prey organisms 



18 and the flounders and the lobsters that people end up eating? 



19 DR. RAY: Well, hopefully over the next 2 days with the 



20 information you already have, and some more of this, which is a lot of 



21 the same, it talks about how much is there and where it is and the 



22 effects that you've seen from these studies on changing grain-size 



23 distribution. 



24 Everybody else can ask the question so what. I'm biased, I'm from 



25 industry. You know, looking at a lot of these things I have a hard time 



26 understanding why, especially when you get outside of an immediate 



27 deposition zone and the trace levels that I see, that you have 



28 biological problem. Grain size seems to be one of the driving factors. 



29 Now, on the work that was done in Molino and the rest of that 



30 comes out, the barium part has been published, the rest of the metals 



31 data comes out, I think that's going to help answer some of the 



32 questions. 



33 The barium work that should be coming out in final publication in 



34 another month, they actually took a look, as I mentioned, they 



57 



