As I pointed out before, BP has been working hard to keep down the estimated size of the spill to minimize their liability. You might say that one datapoint doesn't make a pattern. Well, here's a second one.
Fishermen working to clean the spill are starting to show up in local hospitals with respiratory complaints. Why? BP is not providing them with respirators.
According to Clint Guidry, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association (interviewed on Democracy Now):
It is a question of liability. The minute BP declares that there is a respiratory danger on the situation is the day that they let the door open for liability suits down the line. If they could have gotten away with covering this up, like they did in Alaska Valdez situation, like Exxon, they would not have to pay a penny for any kind of health-related claims....
Don't tell me "no one could have predicted this."
I pointed out a while ago, the air quality on land was deteriorating when I wrote It's not just the water they foul, but also the air. Well, now it is showing up with a vengeance.
The problem is serious enough All 125 commercial fishing boats helping oil recovery efforts off Louisiana's Breton Sound area have been recalled after four workers reported health problems. It's more than four workers.
George Barisich, president of United Commercial Fisherman's Association, called the official account of illnesses "a pack of lies," and said at least nine fisherman were treated in hospital Wednesday, while dozens more have worked through sickness brought on by the clean-up operation.
The official line is the men are sick from heat, stress, and exhaustion. C'mon. These are fishermen we're talking about. These are men who work The Widow Maker for a lifetime. They are used to hard work. They are used to danger. They are used to working under harsh conditions. They are used to stress. You don't pull 125 boats because a few guys have headaches. Hell. We're talking about hard-drinking guys who work just fine with a hangover that would put most of us out of commission for days.
Barsich is saying basically the same thing when he says:
"We're not unaccustomed to working through hard times, even when we're sick. A lot of guys are out there, getting sick, but they were working through it because -- how else are we supposed to live?" Barisich said.
"I warned them. I said this was dangerous and would sicken us. I asked them for respirators, gloves, plastic sleeves, and we're only getting them now from volunteer groups, not from BP."
Even if you didn't know about the EPA readings in the air, you would still expect this. If you remember what happened after Chernobyl and 9.11, this should have an eerie sense of deja vu to it.
Just like what occurred after the Sept, 11th attacks, brave workers are doing what they can to try to help in a disaster. These workers will likely have to suffer for years and years, just like those workers of 9/11 did. Some might even die from their clean-up efforts. But these workers are knowingly risking their health and maybe even their lives.
If you check Skytruth's site you can see there are multiple anecdotal reports of fumes being reported as far East as Tampa Florida. In his interview with Democracy Now, Guidry described his experience with the odor:
The closest I got was Venice, Louisiana, and you could smell it from Venice. At the time I was down there, they were actually spraying Corexit 9527A on the oil spill on top of the water and spraying all around—Venice sits on a peninsula, the Mississippi River, right at the—right above the Head of the Passes. And they were actually spraying this Corexit in the air all around where people were living, with kids and children, and continuously saying how safe it was, which is incorrect
He's right. but that's only part of the story.
"It’s like sniffing gasoline," a fisherman says regarding the oil and oil dispersant that sent him to the hospital. The doctor reported that he looked like a 3 pack-a-day smoker, but he didn’t smoke.
This is anecdotal and could be dismissed. Except for the fact NASA and partner scientists have been studying the Gulf using remote sensing for some time. It's a multi-million dollar project involving two different instruments on three different satellites.
One was MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer), which flies on the Terra and Aqua satellites.
The other was the CALIOP (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar with Orthogonal Polarization) instrument on the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) satellite.
CALIOP is the one measuring volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the air.
The image at right is the CALIOP view of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on May 2, 2010. Red indicates the location of the aerosols over the spill. (NASA)
"MODIS provided an unparalleled view of the entire oil spill and CALIOP gave a pretty good perspective of the layers of volatile organic compounds (VOCs, an oil byproduct) that occurred over the spill, helping us to identify the extent of the spill," said Gallegos. When the oil reaches the surface of the water it comes into contact with the air and releases VOCs.
Researchers at first thought they were seeing emissions from efforts to burn off surface oil in data being sent from CALIPSO. However, once Gallegos was there in person, she saw that the emissions were actually volatile compounds released from oil at the surface.
I am not qualified to interpret the data signature, but the fact they are being picked up with remote sensing says they are there in significant quantities. The question is not whether VOC are there. The question is how much and how deadly. This is doubly troubling because VOC are not something you would expect to see in significant concentrations over open water.
We already know on land the EPA was recording particulate air samples with 3 ppm (more than half the EPA limit). You can be sure it is hundreds of times higher over the spill. More importantly, and this is consistent with what we saw after 9.11, the problem is not just particulates. Volatile organic compounds are toxic. That's why huffing is so damn dangerous.
The danger this represents to anyone working in the toxic zone is well-known, well-documented, and well-understood. The fact BP is -- again -- exercising wilfull negligence by not supplying the workers with respirators shows a continued pattern of putting profits over people.
The boats working this clean up are called vessels of opportunity but it's clear BP is using out-of-work fisherman and boat owners as one more way of externalizing their costs. The guys taking the work are doing it out of desperation.
British Petroleum knows it is dangerous work and that is why they are trying to piggy back on the boat owner's insurance. If you sign up for the program, the terms are clear
Vessel insurance is not required, but is strongly suggested. If your vessel is damaged, it is not covered under BP’s insurance, as you are considered an independent contractor.
Signing on as a contractor means you are an employee at will. That means you didn't have to accept the job and you didn't have to accept the risk so any problems are on you. In this case, that could be a death sentence.