Fishermen, cleanup workers and residents of Gulf Coast believe they are being sickened by toxic chemicals from BP spill.

November 8, 2010



James Miller, a commercial shrimper, lifelong fisherman in Mississippi and former BP oil response worker, is horribly sick.

"I've been vomiting, my head feels like it's going to explode, diarrhoea, and I keep passing out," Miller, who worked in BP's so-called Vessels of Opportunity (VOO) oil response programme, said from his bed at Biloxi Regional Hospital on November 5.

Four days earlier, Miller, his wife and dog were boating on the Gulf of Mexico near one of Mississippi's barrier islands when all three of them fell ill.

"My wife and I felt the chemicals immediately and my dog even started hacking like he was trying to cough up a bone," Miller explained.

Later that day he began vomiting and experiencing a severe headache and diarrhoea. Then on November 4 he passed out in the shower. Concerned by his uncontrollable nausea and bleeding in his esophagus, his wife took him to the emergency room.

"The doctor just told me I have acid reflux," Miller, who has been experiencing many of his symptoms since joining the VOO programme, said. "They don't even know what this is. I told him I needed to be tested for toxic chemicals. I'm in a major hospital and they are telling me they don't know what this is."

Miller's friend, Chris Balius, also a former VOO worker, was in a boat near Miller's on that same day out on the Gulf.

"I was hit by it too," Balius explained. "Headache, nausea, diarrhoea, and now my eyesight is failing. When I was in the VOO programme, I had to let someone else run my boat after 30 days because I got so sick. Every time I go on the water I get sick, so I no longer go, and don't allow my family to go anymore."

Joseph Yerkes, who lives on Okaloosa Island, Florida, was in BP's VOO programme for more than two months, during which time he was exposed to oil and dispersants on a regular basis.

"I worsened progressively," Yerkes said. "Mid-September I caught a cold that worsened until I went to a doctor, who gave me two rounds of antibiotics for the pneumonia-like symptoms, and he did blood tests and found high levels of toxic substances in my blood that he told me came from the oil and dispersants."

Increasing numbers of people across the Gulf Coast are suffering from symptoms that doctors and toxicologists are linking to chemicals from the BP oil disaster that began last summer when the blowout of the Macondo well gushed at least 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.

BP responded by using at least 1.9 million gallons of toxic dispersant to sink the oil.

Widespread toxic exposure


Fisherman James Miller on his boat in Mississippi
[Erika Blumenfeld]
"The dispersants used in BP's draconian experiment contain solvents such as petroleum distillates and 2-butoxyethanol," Dr. Riki Ott, a toxicologist, marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor, said. "People are being made sick in the Gulf because of the unprecedented release of oil and toxic chemicals from this past summer in response to BP's disaster."

Ott is frank in her assessment of the ongoing health crisis residents are facing in the Gulf.

"It's clear to me there are four to five million people, from Terrebonne Parish in Louisiana, through the big bend of Florida, who are being exposed to dangerous levels of dangerous chemicals," she said.

"Oil and dispersants are in the air and water, that are at levels that exceeded the acute or intermediate threshold that federal agencies have declared to be safe. Just speaking of air exposure, and there are scientific papers on this, if you release one molecule of toluene, at three metres above the ground, into a six kilometre wind, that molecule, uninterrupted, will travel 34 kilometres."

Charter plane pilots who have conducted Gulf over-flights have reported having to wipe an oily, orange film from their plane afterwards. Following this, the skin on their hands peeled off. "The oil and dispersants are in the air and in the rain and are making people sick," Ott said. "These Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are there, and at dangerous levels."

Pathways of exposure to the dispersants are inhalation, ingestion, skin and eye contact. Health impacts include headaches, vomiting, diarrhoea, abdominal pains, chest pains, respiratory system damage, skin sensitisation, hypertension, central nervous system (CNS) depression, neurotoxic effects, cardiac arrhythmia and cardiovascular damage. The chemicals are also teratogenic, mutagenic and carcinogenic.

"People experiencing these symptoms, that is their body trying to tell them they are in a dangerous situation," explained Ott. "Exposure to dispersants makes everything worse because they affect the CNS more. They act as an oil delivery system, bringing the oil deeper into the body."

Wilma Subra, a chemist in Louisiana, tested the blood of eight BP cleanup workers and residents in Alabama and Florida. "Ethylbenzene, m,p-Xylene and Hexane are volatile organic chemicals that are present in the BP crude oil," Subra said. "The blood of all three females and five males had chemicals that are found in the BP crude oil. So the presence of these chemicals in the blood indicates exposure."

The BP workers and community members had shockingly high levels of toxic chemicals like Ethylbenzene and Hexanes in their bodies, with one 48-year-old male showing the highest concentrations.

"I'm that 48-year-old male," Gregg Hall, from Pensacola, Florida, said. "I've been nauseas and had headaches, burning eyes and numb feet for months. The bays here are now toxic. It's all around us, yet the government keeps telling us everything is fine."

According to Ott, doctors along the Gulf coast are treating the symptoms of the widespread exposure to BP's toxic chemicals with antibiotics.

"You can't take antibiotics and expect to get better," she explained. "Environmental medicine is what these people need, but it is hard to find that in the Gulf, where the oil and petrochemical industry reign supreme and medical doctors there are reluctant to call a spade a spade."

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Last Edited by UseLessRepEATER on 11/10/2010 02:41 AM