Louisiana environmental activist, Wilma Subra,is being honored in June at the 9th annual Human Rights Award Gala as the domestic recipient. As a chemist, Subra first did testing for corporations, and uncovered harmful pollutions and conditions that she could not report because of her position.
Finally, she decided she could no longer work for the corporations doing so much harm to so many. So, she went into business for the people-forming the Subra Company, to provide testing and knowledge on behalf of Louisiana citizens in the fight to protect their lives and livelihoods. Bringing her expertise in chemistry and microbiology to bear, Wilma now provides scientific evidence for communities to back up their claims when it comes time to go toe to toe with corporate criminals.
She has worked with communities impacted by natural gas drilling in Texas and Wyoming, has helped communities living near polluted shipyards in San Francisco, and covered the potential impacts of importing Italian nuclear waste through New Orleans. She has trained people in rural areas in techniques for monitoring the health of the communities in which they live - gathering data on air quality and the impact of harmful emissions.
In 1999, Wilma received a MacArthur Genius Grant for her work protecting communities, and she served as vice-chair of the EPA National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT). In every capacity, at every turn, she has used her expertise and quiet diligence to help communities in need and spread the word about industry abuses.
Subra has been working tirelessly on behalf of the Gulf communities since the Macando explosion. She has openly criticized OSHA and the Food and Drug Administration regarding the safety of clean up workers and the safety of consuming Gulf seafood. She has been one of few experts seeking to document and raise attention to the ongoing health problems that have been associated with the oil disaster.
Subra, who does research for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, offered a scathing indictment of the way authorities, both public and private, have handled public health issues since the spill.
She said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, at several points during the oil cleanup last year, issued statements of concern and revised training requirements and safety standards for BP's cleanup workers and volunteers. She said those standards, including the use of biohazard gear, were inadequate and inconsistently enforced, as well as coming after many workers and Gulf Coast residents already were exposed.
Subra said the Food and Drug Administration declared in September that Gulf seafood was free from contaminants, but later modified its statement to state only that the level of toxins found was below levels of danger set by the agency. The problem, Subra said, was the methodology used to set the toxicity threshold. "They said a normal seafood diet would be four jumbo shrimp a week," she said. "How many of you, when you eat jumbo shrimp, only eat four?"
A division of the National Institutes of Health has started a program to track the long-term health effects of the spill. According to an online description, the study began with telephone interviews with more than 55,000 people -- Gulf Coast residents, Coast Guard and National Guard members -- who were involved in the cleanup. The long-term tracking will focus on about 25,000 of them.
Subra said the study, financed in part with $10 million from BP, is fundamentally flawed because it doesn't include the broader Gulf Coast population and, more important, doesn't offer care to those being studied.
Subra, basing her opinion on toxicity levels in blood, soil and water samples, says that the health effects of the spill will be greater and last longer than either the oil industry or the government will acknowledge. |
