By Elizabeth Grossman

As the unprecedented offshore oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico unfolds and extraordinary measures are being taken to protect vulnerable coastal and marine environments from the toxic fuel, the question arises: Is the health and safety of responders being protected as well?  Over the past week, I’ve been investigating this question for The Pump Handle, but answers to my questions have not been forthcoming. On May 3, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) head David Michaels visited the Gulf and profile of responder health and safety issues began to rise, but many questions remain unanswered. This is an evolving situation, with conditions changing daily. Information about the incident, while to a certain extent copious, is also being tightly controlled. This is what The Pump Handle has learned to date.

As of May 12th there were approximately 27,500 people involved in what’s officially called the Deepwater Horizon response – some 13,000 civilian and military personnel and an additional 14, 500 volunteers. The effort to date involves more than 500 boats; deployment of nearly 300 miles of protective and absorbent containment boom; and recovery of nearly 5 million gallons of oily water. About half a million gallons of chemical dispersants have been used, most sprayed aerially onto surface water, but nearly 30,000 gallons have also been tested underwater. There are also ongoing controlled burns of oil on the water’s surface. Additional efforts are underway to physically cap the underwater gusher, to plug the well holes, and drill a relief well.  Tar balls are washing ashore, oiled wildlife are being attended to, and affected areas of the Gulf are closed to fishing and shellfish harvesting.

A pressing question is how to ensure the health and safety of response workers – a question being asked with the specters of the Exxon Valdez, World Trade Center, and Hurricane Katrina looming large. Concern is real that in the rush to protect beaches, sensitive wetlands, and wildlife – and to contain the massive oil flow – health and safety of those on the front lines is receiving scant attention.

The crude oil that’s been flowing unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of last least 200,000 gallons per day since BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on April 20th, killing 11 workers on board and seriously injuring 17, is a mixture of carcinogens and other toxic substances. So are the 700,000 gallons of diesel that were on board the rig when it collapsed on April 22nd. The chemical dispersants now being used at unprecedented volume are also hazardous. The toxicity of the combined oil and dispersants and their effect on human health has yet to be determined. (There are no existing consumption safety standards for these dispersants if they’re found in seafood.) There are also questions about health effects of combined exposure to the chemicals that make up crude oil and the strong UV light of the Gulf. Another area of concern is health risks posed by particulates resulting from surface oil burning and from volatile compounds – organic solvents and sulfides among them – emanating from the floating oil now making landfall. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) warns that even at low levels there can be adverse health impacts from these airborne contaminants.

While virtually every federal agency is involved in the response, BP is the incident’s responsible party. “BP is in control,” explains Chip Hughes, director of NIEHS Worker Education Training Program who accompanied Assistant Secretary Michaels on his trip to the Gulf. Hughes and colleagues have been working with OSHA, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and BP to establish response worker health and safety training on site. Working like this in tandem with a responsible party – i.e., the polluter – “I don’t think has ever happened before,” said Hughes at the May 13 meeting of the National Advisory Environmental Health Sciences (NAEHS) Council.

“We don’t think adequate protection is being provided to workers but we think that it will be,” said Hughes.

Among the many challenges to worker safety are the exemptions from hazardous waste operations and emergency response (HAZWOPER) standards OSHA allowed during the Exxon Valdez response – exemptions BP is now operating under. Standard HAZWOPER training is 40 hours; the exemption allows a 4-hour course. Trainings for responders are now taking place at various staging sites on the Gulf coast, but they were only set up in the past few days.

It’s been hard to get information about worker health and safety. Last week questions about health and safety training put to the Deepwater Horizon Response Joint Information Center (JIC) in Robert, LA went unanswered. State offices signing up volunteers did not have this information either. The JIC provided contact information for a BP spokesperson, who said he had no information and told me to call the JIC I’d just spoken to.

Questions raised over the past several days to which definitive answers have yet to be forthcoming include who is providing and paying for protective gear and if the gear is adequate to the task – including the handling of weathered crude and chemical dispersants. The dispersants being used contain petroleum-based solvents, which are not consistently compatible with certain plastics, synthetics, and rubber among other materials.

Among the exposures of concern are with oil and dispersant as boom is laid and oil-soiled boom is replaced – work that is now ongoing, including by fisherman and other community members responding with what are called Vessels of Opportunity, typically fishing and tourism boats put out of work by the disaster but now being used to lay boom, skim oil, and perform other clean up and mitigation work. Given the hazards, decontamination of boats, equipment, clothing and people is also a concern.  A material safety data sheet for crude oil cautions that contaminated clothing requires special handling as fuel vapors could ignite a laundry dryer. It also recommends special breathing protection.

NIOSH has now posted health and safety bulletins for the dispersants, one of which contains 30-60% 2-butoxyethanol and the other 10-30% petroleum distillates. 2-butoxyethanol can destroy red blood cells; the NIOSH recommended exposure limit for a full work shift is 5 parts per million. For petroleum distillates in mist form, NIOSH recommended exposure limit is 15 minutes.

OSHA, NIEHS and NIOSH have available in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese an oil spill clean up training tool. These agencies are now directly involved in training in the Gulf staging areas – a development of the past several days.

The state of Louisiana has a 31-page vessel decontamination manual, which applies to the kinds of small boats being used in the Gulf cleanup; it specifies use of eye protection, gloves, boots, hard hats, and hearing protection (depending on cleaning method).

Dermatitis and inhalation of oil and dispersant chemicals are a concern. “We hope people have gloves,” said Hughes on the 13th.

Worry about community responder health and safety is not unfounded. In the first weeks of the response – we’re now in day 24 – BP produced an agreement to be signed by owners of Vessels of Opportunity. The original Master Vessel Charter Agreement, as it’s called, required the boat owners to relieve BP of responsibility for health and safety training and required that the boat owner agree to a scope of work on the water that involves contact with hazardous oil and chemicals, without training provided by BP.

On May 7, the United Commercial Fisherman’s Association in Louisiana and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) won a Temporary Restraining Order from the U.S. District court, Second District, requiring that BP take responsibility for hazardous chemical exposure safety for all commercial fishermen it hires for cleanup and mitigation work. The judgment confirmed that BP was imposing onerous burdens on the fishermen, explained Stuart Smith of Smith Stag, the firm leading the suit. (The fishermen and community groups throughout the Gulf region have also filed suit to recover damages.) Training is now being provided for Vessels of Opportunity crews, and according to the JIC over the past several days about 1,000 people have now received such training.

On the 12th, Louisiana District Court again ruled in favor of the fishermen, saying that BP must honor legal claims against the company from fishermen who’ve accepted payments from BP to make up for income lost as a result of the oil.

What the occupational and environmental health specialists want to help avert are long term health damages. Among the concerns raised by Hughes and other members of the NAEHS Council, including NIEHS director Linda Birnbaum, is the need for medical surveillance for response workers and community residents – which would help identify any adverse health effects sooner rather than later. Another is that thus far there are no mental health care provisions for responders or community members.

NOAA now projects that heavy oil flow will reach landfall near Venice, Louisiana by Sunday May 16th.

[University of Queensland Professor Mark] Kendall told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the nanopatch is designed to place vaccines directly into the skin, where a “rich body of immune cells are.” A needle, by contrast, injects vaccines into muscles with few immune cells. As a result, the vaccines delivered by nanopatch are more effective, he said.

Cheap, simple, and effective vaccine administration has the potential to dramatically increase immunization rates in underresourced areas. Currently, many agencies struggle to fund struggle to fund vaccination programs that rely on refrigerated vaccines administered by trained professionals. Kendall also points out that easier transportation and administration of nanopatches can speed vaccination when the next pandemic develops. (The kind of fast response he envisions would also require us to overhaul our current vaccine-production system, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Such worthwhile applications of nanotechnology reminds us why we need to get this right — study the risks of nanotechnology, and put appropriate safeguards in place before nanoparticles are omnipresent. If several years from now nanoparticles have become the next asbestos, the chances of successfully promoting this kind of promising application will shrink.

In addition to the environmental health risks that DDT poses, its continued use often results in mosquitos becoming resistant to the pesticide – or, they can adapt to interventions like insecticide-treated bednets by changing the times and places in which they bite, which Shah reports has happened in Dar es Salam.

Here are some of the non-chemical approaches that Shah describes:

In Oaxaca, Mexico, malariologists found that the local malaria vector, Anopheles pseudopunctipennis, hatches from the still, algae-choked waters on the edges of streams, rarely flying more than 2 kilometers from its birthplace. And so, starting in 1999, they recruited volunteers in malarious communities to remove green algae and trash from the rivers and streams near their settlements.

… In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Anopheles gambiae lays its eggs in trash-blocked sewer drains, and so community workers there began a program of clearing drains and spreading the microbial insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis into sewers. “This was the lowest-hanging fruit of them all,” says Gerry Killeen of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, “the most basic and undramatic environmental management.” It led to a 30 percent drop in A. gambiae’s transmission of malaria.

The drawback to this kind of approach is that it must be developed for the conditions that exist in each community, based on the characteristics of their malaria-transmitting mosquitos. By contrast, an intervention like insecticide-treated bednets can be applied almost identically in many different countries – which makes it appealing to donors and international organizations that work in many different countries. Eradicating mosquito habitat can also be very labor-intensive, and require constant vigilance.

 Shah also points out that non-chemical methods were used before the world became so enamored with DDT:

These nuanced — but decidedly low-tech — programs recall an earlier, pre-chemical era, when malaria control workers made similar gains against the disease by tinkering with the local environment, mostly because they had few other options. In the copper mines of Zambia during the 1930s, for example, malariologists significantly reduced malaria by clearing vegetation, removing obstructions from local waterways, and draining flooded areas. In Panama, during the building of the canal in the early 1900s, anti-malaria workers drained swamps and coated puddles with a thin skin of larvae-suffocating oil, part of a multi-pronged anti-malaria strategy that enabled the canal to be built. Similar measures helped eradicate malaria in the U.S. South.

Environmental management methods fell into disuse after World War II, with the development of a string of synthetic insecticides and drugs, led by DDT and chloroquine. Powerful and highly effective, modern insecticides and anti-malarial drugs can kill malaria mosquitoes and parasites quickly and cheaply, wherever they are used, regardless of local conditions. They can be implemented in even the most remote locales, with minimal infrastructure.

Fashion isn’t the only area where things that were once considered old-fashioned suddenly can become the cool new trend.

Children risk pesticide poisoning, serious injury, and heat illness. They suffer fatalities at more than four times the rate of children working in other jobs. Some work without even the most basic protective gear, including shoes or gloves. Many told Human Rights Watch that their employers did not provide drinking water, hand-washing facilities, or toilets. Girls and women in these jobs are exceptionally vulnerable to sexual abuse.

The country’s estimated 300,000-400,000 child farmworkers aren’t covered by the same restrictions on work hours and hazardous work that apply to children in other industries. Human Rights Watch notes that even existing laws covering child farworkers are poorly enforced. David Crary reports in the Associated Press that Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis is adding more field investigators to improve enforcement, and legislation introduced by US Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard would eliminate the discrepancies between the law regarding child farmworkers and children employed in other industries.

In other news:

CNN: Two gas explosions in the Raspadskaya mine in Western Siberia have killed 52 workers, and 38 people are still missing. At least 18 of the dead are rescue workers who entered after the first blast and were killed by the second explosion.

Charleston Gazette: Delores Bragg and Freda Hatfield, whose husbands Don Bragg and Ellery Hatfield were killed in the 2006 Aracoma Alma mine disaster, have filed a lawsuit against the Mine Safety and Health Administration for not citing violations at the mine that could have been corrected and prevented the fire that killed the two mineworkers. 

ProPublica: Federal stimulus money is funding a cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Newly employed cleanup workers are happy to have the jobs, but they don’t seem to be getting adequate training on the risks of beryllium disease and how to limit their exposure.

San Francisco Chronicle: A respiratory therapist and a police officer became ill with bacterial meningitis after exposure to a patient who had the disease; now, Cal/OSHA has fined the medical center and the police and fire departments a total of more than $135,000 for failing to limit emergency workers’ exposure.

Occupational Health & Safety: OSHA has cited Lowe’s Home Centers for repeatedly failing to document and report employees’ injuries and illnesses; the proposed penalties total $110,000.

Weise references a Korean study conducted following the 2007 sinking of an oil tanker of the Korean coast, which found that residents had an increased risk of headaches, nauseau, and neurological and respiratory symptoms. With regards to the dispersants, she reports, “The potential human hazard for the two dispersants being used to break up the oil is rated high for one of them, moderate for another, according to the Material Data Safety Sheets posted on the government’s Deepwater Horizon Response website.”

But the section of Weise’s article that really caught my attention was this one (emphasis added):

Jeffrey Short, a scientist with the ocean conservation group Oceana, says in previous spills, especially Exxon Valdez, that was a danger during the shoreline cleanup phase.

There isn’t much scientific literature on the topic in part because “the people who got sickest and won against Exxon got settlements that required that the records be sealed. But there were a lot of anecdotal complaints about the impact on cleanup workers,” says Short, who was lead chemist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on the damage assessment at the Exxon spill.

When health issues end up in court, it’s not unusual for the case to end in a settlement that requires both sides to keep confidential the documents involved in the case. These documents may contain important health information, though (such as results of clinical studies or surveillance efforts), so public health loses out. This is one of the classic examples of “sequestered science,” or scientific knowledge concealed from the public.

My colleagues at the Project on Scientific Knowledge and Public Policy held a conference on this problem of sequestered science and published several of the papers from the conference in an issue of the Duke University School of Law’s journal Law and Contemporary Problems. Authors of the articles suggested mechanisms for getting sequestered public-health information to the public; their suggestions included publicly available registries study data (which could be anonymized) and instructions to juries to consider previously negotiated confidentiality agreements when deciding punitive damages. Daniel J. Givelber and Anthony Robbins offer this straightforward suggestion:

For judges and courts, the most straightforward response is to refuse to enter protective orders calling for secrecy relating to materials divulged during pretrial discovery or settlement agreements. Thus, someone who breaches a confidentiality agreement would no longer risk being in contempt of court.

The lack of availability of health information on those who sued Exxon for illness following the Valdez spill and cleanup is just the latest example of how sequestering science harms public health.

“one of the legends of environmental and occupational health.  His work took him from the freeways of Los Angeles to the tire factories of Akron to the granite mines of Vermont.  The focus of his research was to investigate and quantify environmental risks and then contribute to strategies to mitigate that risk in the workplace and in everyday life.”

My dear friend and former deputy asst. secretary at MSHA, Andrea Hricko, MPH, first met John Peters in the early 1970s.  She was working for Ralph Nader, and John Peters was a professor at Harvard.   He was serving on a panel for OSHA making an inquiry about vinyl chloride and BF Goodrich – and she testified before him.  She told me

“He was already on his way to becoming a legend in occupational health, with his studies of granite shed workers and workers exposed to toluene diisocyanate (TDI).  

After leaving MSHA in 1997, Andrea  was recruited by John Peters to USC.  She said:

“John Peters was a brilliant, witty, and gentle man whose main professional goal in life was ‘doing the best science possible,’ something he did with the greatest integrity.  John has left an amazing legacy, hiring and mentoring  a dozen new faculty members at USC who now work on air pollution and other environmental health issues, and who all already miss him terribly.”

A statement issued by USC recounts just some of Dr. John M Peters’ accomplishments.

• Conducted and published results on landmark studies on the health effects of silica, asbestos, vinyl chloride and studies of the health of firefighters and granite workers
• Founding director of the division of environmental health in the Department of Preventive Medicine
• Founded the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center and directed it for 10 years
• Founding director of the Children’s Health Study at USC
• Established two national research centers, one on environmental health sciences and another on children’s environmental health funded by NIEHS and the EPA

His colleague Frank Gilliland, MD, PhD, professor of environmental health, said John M Peters was:

“a true visionary in environmental and occupational health who made key contributions that have improved public health. His example of scientific integrity in an often-contentious field is an important part of his legacy. John has been an effective mentor for many of the current and future leaders in environmental health research.”

I never had the pleasure of meeting Dr. John Peters, but feel like I know him through his leadership on the Children’s Health Study.  The students in my undergraduate course “Health and the Environment” and I read several papers (here, here, here) about this amazing epi study of thousands of children recruited from elementary schools in 12 southern California cities.  We’ve learned how current levels of ozone, NO2, particulate matter, other air contaminant affect lung function growth, increase school absences, exacerbate asthma, and even cause new cases of asthma.   I’m proud to report that over the last four years, 130 young people know a lot more about air contaminants and public health because of John Peters’ work.  I feel confident in saying that my students know that complex and successful research like the Children’s Health Study reflects the heart, soul and public health passion of John Peters and his colleagues.

Dr. John M Peters is survived by his wife, Ruth Kloepfer Peters, his four children, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Lest you think the press and blogs are the only way to take the pulse of the public, think again.  Mr. Dennis O’Dell, the current UMWA H&S director, is sharing his disgust about MSHA’s decision on the social media site Facebook.  His commentary begins:

May 2 (3:07 pm):  “The UMWA has been asked by miners at Upper Big Branch to be their Representatives during the investigation.  There are those out there who want to ice us out of the interviews. What happened to transparency?  If there is nothing to hide then why keep us out. What about a Public Hearing?”

May 6 (8:27 am): “Ok so here is the deal..the UMWA,Upper Big Branch family members, the media, the WV Coal Board, and even Massey has asked for open public hearings on the UBB investigation. What does MSHA do…”

[See DOL News Release: "MSHA announces series of public meetings to bolster transparency in investigation of Upper Big Branch Mine explosion"]

May 7 (4:30 pm):  “Does anyone out there really think that the public would fall for this attempt from MSHA of playing spin doctor with their so called public hearings for transparency. Read the last statement of the news release.  That says it all folks.”

“Prior to and in preparation for the public hearings, MSHA and the state of West Virginia will conduct a physical examination of the mine and private interviews of miners, mining officials and others with knowledge and information about the disaster.”

May 7 (4:30 pm): “Private: removed from or out of public view or knowledge; secret.  Public: open to all persons”

Dennis O’Dell is echoing the sentiments of the UMWA President Cecil Roberts who said in a statement:

“The families of the victims do, the UMWA does, the media does, even the company said it does. The West Virginia Board of Coal Mine Health and Safety – made up equally of industry and labor representatives – voted unanimously for an open and public process.  The only people who don’t want this to be completely open are the government agencies, and that, frankly, continues a bad practice that we expected would change under this administration.”

Ken Ward also reminds us in a post entitled “Way back when…” that Mr. Main (when he was director of H&S for the UMWA) said “Congress intended MSHA’s investigations to constitute a public accounting, not a secretive process.”

We also call for an end to McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association, the harassment of scientists by politicians seeking distractions to avoid taking action, and the outright lies being spread about them.

Gratitude is expressed to the 255 signatories because they are speaking out and challenging what could become, or has become, status quo.

I hear the rally cry expressed by the signatories and will respond by doing what I can to continue to fight for the integrity of science and the people who practice and teach it.

All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts.

Sign me up.


There’s been no formal announcement yet today from the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration about how it plans to proceed in its investigation of the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster — no word on public hearings or opening up the interviews to the victims’ families or taking any other steps to make this process more transparent.

But the information I’ve received so far from various sources is that this is the plan:

– MSHA will continue its general practice of conducting investigation interviews behind closed doors.

– The United Mine Workers union — designed as miners’ representative under the Mine Act by several Upper Big Branch workers — will not be allowed in the room for interviews unless the specific miner being questioned has designated the union as his representative.

– Miners and mine employees being questioned will be allowed a “personal representative” in the room with them for their interviews — meaning if miners are convinced to appoint the company lawyers as their representatives, the company lawyers get in the room.

– Family members of the miners killed in the disaster will not be allowed into the interviews — and neither will their lawyers.

– Investigators from the state Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training will be allowed in the room, as will officials from special investigator Davitt McAteer’s team.

– At some point later, MSHA will conduct a “public hearing” in which company officials, miners and inspectors chosen by MSHA will answer questions in a public setting. Apparently, only agency investigators will do the questioning.  Unlike McAteer’s public hearing on the Sago Mine disaster, family members of the victims will not be allowed to ask questions.

– There is no plan currently for making public any of the transcripts of the interviews until after the entire investigation is completed — and even then, some of these documents might be withheld if releasing them would conflict with any ongoing criminal investigation.

I’m told last night’s meeting between MSHA and family members of the miners did not go especially well, and got pretty heated … perhaps we’ll be hearing more about all of this — and getting some announcement from MSHA — later today.

Ken Ward, Jr. is a a reporter for the Charleston Gazette (since 1991), has won numerous awards for his investigative writing on worker safety and health, and is the chairman of the Society of Environmental Journalist’s First Amendment Taskforce.