Two years after BP oil spill, a health crisis continues in the Gulf

Clean up crews walk past beachgoers as they look for globs of oil on Dolphin Island, Alabama June 4, 2010. REUTERS/Sean Gardner

This Nation investigation into health problems caused by the BP oil disaster two years ago is a must-read. Reporter Antonia Juhasz chronicles the personal stories of families affected by lingering toxic crap—the oil, but also substances like Corexit, used to clean up the oil. Get ready to be newly outraged at our government, BP, and all the lawyers defending this disgrace while working-class Americans suffer and die from corporate recklessness and greed.

As information about the settlement negotiations comes to light, several critical issues are not being adequately addressed—including the human health crisis brought on by the disaster.

Many people whose health was adversely affected by the spill would be excluded. The Medical Benefits Settlement covers about 90,000 people who are qualifying cleanup workers (out of an estimated 140,000) and 110,000 coastal residents living within one-half to one mile of the coast (out of a coastal population of 21 million). Although it would cover “certain respiratory, gastrointestinal, eye, skin and neurophysiological” conditions, it excludes mental health and a host of physical ailments, including cancers, birth defects, developmental disorders and neurological disorders including dementia.

The proposed settlement provides a health outreach program and twenty-one years of health monitoring—but not healthcare.

The article also includes this link, on how to help.

Investigation: Two Years After the BP Spill, A Hidden Health Crisis Festers (The Nation, via Ned Sublette)

• [suburbanhick]

  Love the juxtaposition of the workers dressed like they’re in a biohazard hot zone and the sunbathing women looking at them like “WTF? Uh, should we be worried about this?”

  • [Marc45]

    What workers?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Those aren’t women; those are the mutant shrimp.

    • [Felton / Moderator]

      Life mimicking…Mimic?

• [Teresa McTigue]

  The photo caption is wrong.  That should be Dauphin Island, not Dolphin Island.

  • [M Carlson]

     Thank you. That’s exactly what I came in to say.

    One of my and my husband’s favorite spots.

  • [Jonathan]

    I was coming in to say that too! I lived there for 3 years while working on my Masters degree in Marine Science at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. Lots of great memories :)

• [Mary Margaret McCurnin]

  That photo! White women tanning while black men are contaminated! I was in Grand Isle during the spill. BP had “gangs” of black men and women doing the clean up. All of the bosses were white. It was chilling and telling. None of the workers were comfortable talking to the press or just regular people who were watching. 

  • [Dan Hibiki]

    were they white when they started cleaning?

  • [desperado]

    This is much more a symptom of the societies they drew the workers from than innate/overt racism.

    TLDR: They didn’t pay very much, so only the downtrodden would take the job.

    Unfortunately, that means African Americans, etc.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s abhorrent;  but it’s not a symptom of BP, but rather society.

    Edit: and not that I’m defending BP. I rather don’t like them, and hope to never work with/for them again.

• [denise h.]

  if you live in Reno NV and this topic pisses you off, tonight is the Nevada premiere of a documentary called “The Big Fix,” which exposes the corruption surrounding the Deepwater oil spill, BP’s media coverup, and the Corexit cleanup debacle.

  it’s tonight, 20 April, at 7pm, on the UNR campus, Jot Travis Building, Room 100

  more info: http://www.blackrocksolar.org/news/2012/black-rock-solar-to-host-nevada-premiere-of-the-big-fix/

• [Navin_Johnson]

  The crowded future stings my eyes
  I still find time to exercise
  In a uniform with two white stripes

  Unlock my section of the sand
  It’s fenced off to the waters edge
  I clamp a gasmask on my head
  On my beach at night
  Bathe in my moonlight

  Another tanker’s hit the rocks
  Abandoned to spill out its guts
  The sand is laced with sticky glops

  O’ Shimmering moonlight sheen upon
  The waves and water clogged with oil
  White gases steam up from the soil
  On my beach at night
  Bathe in my moonlight

  I squish dead fish between my toes
  Try not to step on any bones
  I turn around and I go home

  I slip back through my basement door
  Switch off all that I own below
  Dive in my scalding wooden tub
  My own beach at night
  bathe in my moonlight

  There will always be a moon over Marin.

• [Adrian Beauchamp]

  Fancy that!  on a German radio station today ( Bayern 5) I was listening to a special report about how the shrimp in the Gulf are still being caught and sold despite the catch including many sick critters ( Tumours, extra or missing eyes, other nastiness.) A fisherman was saying how he thought that in 2 years he didnt think there would be any sea life left alive in 2 years.

• [James Gilbreath]

  Speaking of Dauphin Island, there’s now some thought that damage control using sand from the island may eventually split it in half:  http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120331/APN/1203310677

  It’s a damn shame, too. I live in Alabama, and though I haven’t spent a lot of time on Dauphin Island, it’s a really beautiful place.

• [Brad Bell]

  PART 2: BP Covered Up Blow-out Prior to Deepwater Horizon 
  http://ecowatch.org/2012/bpcoverup/

  “Evidence now implicates top BP executives as well as its partners Chevron and Exxon and the Bush Administration in the deadly cover-up—which included falsifying a report to the Securities Exchange Commission.”

  “The cables also reveal that BP’s oil-company partners knew about the blow-out but they too concealed the information from Congress, regulators and the Securities Exchange Commission. BP’s major U.S. partners in the Caspian Sea drilling operation were Chevron and Exxon.”

  ““The only reason the public doesn’t know about it is because the Azerbaijani government conspired with them to disappear the people who saw it happen and then to act in concert, in collusion, in cahoots with BP, with Exxon, with Chevron to conceal this event from the American public.””

  BP also bribed Azerbaijan officials, who made certain witnesses disappear. Yet another example of government and corporate corruption made visible by Nobel Peace prize nominee Bradley Manning, and Wikileaks.

  • [desperado]

    As someone that is frequently on rigs, and is pretty well informed about all this, whoever wrote that article on ecowatch quite clearly doesn’t know what they are talking about.

    Deepwater Horizon WAS avoidable.  It WAS stupid.  I assume BP HAS covered up other incidents in the past.  But reading that article made me want to pull my eyes out.  I couldn’t finish.

    Edit: BOPs are not useless. They are one (of many) reason(s) Norway has such a better safety record than the USA or Mexico.

    The MISUSE of BOPs makes them useless.

    This was not the first big nasty spill in the Gulf, by any means. It just happened to be the first that the USA regulated.

• [PeterK]

  Have there been any statistical analyses of these ailments?  The article is full of anecdotal information, which is great at humanizing a problem, but lacks determination of causality for these ailments.  If the problem is as widespread as the article intimates, then doing such analyses should not prove difficult.

  For instance Keith Langner, who now suffers from mulit-infarc dementia, developed the dementia at age 49, but normally affects people ages 55-75.  What is meant by normally?  Is that one standard deviation from the mean?  If so, what are the chances that someone would develop this disease at age 49? 1%? 5%? 10%?

  If the goal is to determine causality, and hold the responsible party accountable, it will take more than anecdotal evidence.  I feel BP is likely responsible for the majority of these health issues, but I cannot regard my feelings as proof.

• [Eark_the_Bunny]

  Did anyone really expect a corporation that causes a major problem to really fix that problem or to at least pay proper compensation to those affected by that problem.  It is going be cover up, then toss a few pennies around and wait for everything to go away.  Just look at what happened to Bhopal, India.

• [BookGuy]

  “Like, OMG, get out of my sun, you cleaner guys!”

• [Mantissa128]

  Mother Jones: BP’s Corexit Oil Tar Sponged Up by Human Skin.

• [Incipient Madness]

  So, a few of my fellow Gulf Coast peeps have posted here. Do y’all get bombarded by BP popups? I can’t watch Youtube without getting a BP vid as the featured video. And they are exhorting me to go to Alabama and Mississippi. Why would I go there when I can get to local beaches in forty minutes? I think it’s because a few of the Deepwater crew lived here in Houston, and BP is about the most hated company here as there have been a couple of BP refinery explosions in the last ten years.

• [Itsumishi]

  It angers me greatly that BP is allowed to operate anywhere. Even before this their environmental and safety records have been so fucked they should have either been sued to oblivion or had any permits they once had revoked. However I guess that wouldn’t sit well with the “drill baby drill” mentality that so many governments around the world seem to take.

  One more question. Why is that worker wearing a hard hat? 

  • [Guest]

    Safety First! right?

• [philllies]

  Those are not white girls – the closest one is oatmeal, the moddle one is starting to turn pink, and the end one is brownyish. You can tell who the supervisor is because he has a whisle.