Mystery Illnesses Plague Louisiana Oil Spill Crews

From Agence France Presse via AlterNet:

Robichaux, an ear, nose and throat specialist whose office an hour's drive southwest of New Orleans is nestled on a roadside marked with handwritten signs advertising turtle meat for sale, says he is treating many of the local patients in their homes.

"Their work ethic is so strong, they are so stoic, they don't want people to know when they're sick," he said.

"Ninety percent of them are getting worse... Nobody has a clue as to what it is."

According to a roster compiled by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a total of 52,000 workers were responding to the Gulf oil spill as of August 2010.

The state of Louisiana has reported 415 cases of health problems linked to the spill, with symptoms including sore throats, irritated eyes, respiratory tract infections, headaches and nausea.

But Bernard Goldstein, an environmental toxicologist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said the US government's method of collecting health data on the workers is flawed.

For instance, a major study of response workers by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences was not funded until six months after the spill, a critical delay that affects both the biology and the recall ability of the workers.

"It is too late if you go six months later," he told AFP.

More here.

You may or may not recall reports that BP threatened response workers with termination if they wore respirator masks--the thinking of critics at the time was that if BP allowed such a sensible safety measure, it would open them up to lawsuits. And here we are a year later, and workers are sick. No surprise there. What is surprising is that the feds were so slow to start looking at this. I mean, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised: after all, I was the guy who kept saying at the time that it was impossible to tell the difference between the federal government and the oil industry. Foot dragging on the health issue is entirely in keeping with the notion of BP dominating federal action throughout the crisis. But really, we have no idea one way or the other whether there's something sinister afoot with the six month delay in studying possible health effects on all these cleanup crews.

But we do know that some of these people are sick. We do know that the number of workers experiencing mysterious illness may be much higher than the confirmed number. We know that both BP and the feds have sat on lots of information about the spill that was, and still is, considered harmful to the oil giant's reputation. And we know that BP didn't allow workers to take safety precautions.

I'm taking something of a leap of faith here and asserting that this shit is for real. I mean, if it looks, smells, and tastes like dog shit, it's very likely that it is dog shit. People are now very sick because they've been poisoned by both petroleum toxins and oil dispersant chemicals. BP will fight like badgers to avoid responsibility and to confuse purposely public discourse on the issue. The federal government will probably help them. Meanwhile, honest Americans who simply wanted some work, who simply wanted to help clean up the massive mess made by BP, are becoming disabled. We have no idea how bad their health is going to get, but they have been poisoned.

Poison often kills.

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