Respirators for Some Gulf Workers, Finally!
Posted July 6, 2010 in Health and the Environment
The Unified Command of the oil spill clean-up response announced Thursday that some of the workers will finally be provided with respirators. This welcome announcement was tempered by the contrary assertion - also from the Unified Command - that the workers don't really need respirators. In a CNN story today, "Chris Coulon, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the Unified Command, said air sampling is being conducted and there is "no indication at all" that the respirators being distributed are necessary."
Apart from the obvious question of why someone from the Department of Agriculture is making pronouncements about the need (or lack of need) for respirators for oil clean-up workers, I really have to wonder again about what's going on out there. There are still major gaps in the publicly-available data, and there are still these contradictory pronouncements coming out of BP and the various federal agencies.
The Unified Command announcement says: "respirators will be provided to response workers engaged in the source control activities and for vessels involved in burning crude oil. These respirators are provided as part of a comprehensive respiratory protection program. Respirators only need to be worn when air-monitoring results indicate an elevated level of air contaminants, or when professional judgment determines there is potential exposure, or when workers are reporting health effects or symptoms."
That's a good first step toward protecting workers. It still doesn't address the fishermen hired by BP who are out there skimming the oil from their own boats. I'm still wondering if they're adequately protected. Now they're being encouraged to wear paper masks to reduce the odors. Is that enough? We don't have the data to know for sure.
Here are the latest data BP is reporting from offshore:
Results are posted from April 27 – June 1 for benzene, total hydrocarbons, and 2-Butoxyethanol. Nearly 65% (324 out of 499) samples had detectable levels of hydrocarbons and 15% (75 out of 399) had levels greater than 10ppm. 6 samples exceed 100 ppm which in a previous monitoring summary was labeled as the action limit -- this label appears to have been removed in the most recent summary document. No information is given on where these samples, or the 5 found to be between 50 and 100 ppm, were taken.
20 (4%) samples had detectable levels of benzene with measurements up to 0.5 ppm.
20% (29 out of 148) samples had detectable levels of 2-Butoxyethanol with measurements up to 10 ppm. This range encompasses the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health Recommended Exposure Limit (REL) for occupational exposure to 2-Butoxyethanol of 5 ppm. The document cites the OSHA PEL for 2-Butoxyethanol of 50 ppm, which I have already explained is not health-protective. As with the benzene and hydrocarbon results, these readings don't say where they were taken, and who was in the area.
Are the latest respirator recommendations adequate to protect clean-up workers? I'm not sure they are, but I'm glad that at least some of the brave workers out there will have the benefit of respirators if they need them. More than 70 days into this spill, it's about time!
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Comments
Vik — Jul 7 2010 12:13 PM
Suppose all of this so called "spewed-oozed" OIL had been collected and contained in far flung containers worldwide, processed as tar for our roads or refined as fuel for our transport fleet, then none of this hoopla would have taken the shape of monster news event for worldwide. Perhaps, the impact or magnitude of the OIL would have been same on our environment on air and land both. The gas would have added much more carbon contents had it got burnt or tar would have covered much more square miles across the world than the "oozed" layer of oil we see over the surface of waters in the gulf. The issue is, the immediate psychological impact of "what we see is what we get" which is much smaller foot print in a concentrated portion of the area compared to had we used in gas or in tar form spreading all over the world. As a result this has definitely caused a panic effect among all of us, especially for / to the people living near the epic center of "oozing" oil.
Conclusively had we contained all of the oozing oil as if it did not have ruptured the way it is, then obviously no one would have known about how much of the oil has been contained away or say "hidden away", which could have been refined to be used as fuel with much more "severe" impact of carbon foot print and heaps of "solid" waste of tar and other residuals spread all over the beautiful landscape as "black top road". Hence, it would have been "slow & silent spew" of carbon in the air or cladding beautiful land with black top tar, with no much noise or attention as compared to what we have seen/heard in over last 60 days.
Figure this, the current massive oil oozing, is significantly pretty small as compared to over 100 yrs of oil usage, that have caused much greater damage by inducing and injecting real life carbon contents in the environment by burning fuel along with cladding over millions of square miles over the beautiful landscape called "road to success" to roll the "train of every day transportation".
With all above, why do we want to pull political pundits into this? What political figures can do in this issue, except taking advantage of fueling their own agenda to propagate their own point of view for their own or party's sake?
It’s all about man-made mad processes, politics, products, policies......that never let the "lonely" man-kind live and die in peace, rather in “p.i.e.c.e.s"!
Like it use to be dark ages, then came stone ages, here comes man-made "man-age" , go figure and manage the mess together.
Sometimes all this makes me think, while REAPING the Profits out OF or FOR "earthly" resources, why are we RAPING the Mother Earth? isn't mother earth has already given us enough to sustain with basic earthly/environ friendly transportation needs? Like there's provision for all kinds of terrains, for nice paved road there's Horse and horse driven carriage, for muddy-paddy area or needs more "Hummer" power, then there's elephant ride or elephant driven carriage, if there's desert sandy terrain then there's camel or camel pulled carriage, if it is agriculture fields, there’s OX. All natural environmental friendly with perfectly synchronized speed and no need of seat belts or PPE, with zero to slim chance of high speed road accidents.
As compared to automobiles these "god given good" natural transportation resources are far better than our own complicated pieces of so called "automobiles". The natural transportation model has no environment pollution thru its operational life cycle, and no toxic waste at "the end of product life cycle". Whereas, the "man-made mad" car takes and emits all kinds of chemicals to produce or to make it functional thru its operational life cycle, till "the end of product life cycle", with high level of concentrated toxic solids or gaseous waste, which are obviously NOT biodegradable. Moreover, there are so many variables to produce and functionally make the car run with high probability of failures and unreliability, it’s like "out of control". Whereas the natural transportation model has less operating variables with much higher confidence level, reliability and way over "under-control". (Same applies for the operating and maintenance cost between both types of transportation models, off-course the natural model is more economically cost effective than "Man Made MAD Machine Model")
Now here comes the hybrid and alternate fuel type cars, may use or emit low on gases. Perhaps to produce these hybrids it may take heaps of chemicals thru process, to making it functional or replace and dump batteries, and most importantly at "end of product life", the solid wastes will be enormous with heavy metal batteries. By volume weight, hybrids and electric cars would have much higher levels of toxic wastes as compared to todays, full combustion fueled cars.
It’s all about “victimization” and “ownership”……..we think as if we are the OWNERS of this planet and universe, with “can do anything freedom attitude”, as if all is FREE to abuse and use the mother earth however whenever, where ever we want and like, without evaluating the environmental, ecological or geological impacts. As a result here’s what we got, “go figure the mess and fix it”, this is what we are telling our next generation to do. Today, what we have created, all the gadgets to add “comforts of lifestyle” at all levels are biting us back in the butt.
Causing health issues, environ issues, depleting cultures, causing endless industrial or accidents in road, mid air, at home thru all walks of life. All of it, it’s the result of what we “own” is what makes us “victim” about. By “reaping” the profits out of or for earthly resources, we are “raping” the beautiful form, fit and function of our mother earth, disturbing with its environ, eco-system, landscape, minerals, vegetation, animal life, languages and cultures of human settlement across the horizon, making it more “global economy”. If you don’t like or I don’t like we have a “safety shield” of WMDs (ammos) filled with massive amount of chemically refined reactive compound to cause intensive destruction by bio-toxic or implosion or explosion. This is hoopla of global peace by hoax, force or torch.
Bill — Jul 7 2010 01:38 PM
What a rant.
Michal Spocko — Jul 7 2010 08:03 PM
Dr. Solomon.
I'm curious why it appears that the complete data from the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (CTEH) has not been made available to you and other interested members of the public and media.
You have complained about the gaps in the CTEH data in other posts. I've been trying to push for availability of this data as well as some congress people. CTEH believes that their data has been given to the federal government and the public. See this letter:
http://cteh.com/CTEH%20Open%20Letter-June30%202010.pdf
They are throwing the ball back to people like you, Elana Schor and Reps. Capps and Welsh by saying, "Nobody asked us for the data,but we gave all our data out anyway."
Could you please verify that they have in fact given all this data? If they are holding a back information it would be good to know what and why. If they have given out all data I will stop agitating for its release.. If they have not I will keep demanding it.
At last Friday's Mobile Incident Command Post Media Conference Call I asked again for it to be made available. Elana Schor of Greenwire has also asked for it and been denied.
I'm very interested in who (if anyone) is doing the "vessel of opportunity" level air quality monitoring for the fishermen.
Is CTEH only monitoring the air to protect BP against future legal claims? Is there anyone else who is doing real time air monitoring at the worker level looking for the complete spectrum of chemicals (including the recently revealed ingredients of COREXIT 9500 and 9527 ?) http://www.fastcompany.com/1658530/epa-reveals-ingredients-in-corexit-oil-dispersant
I believe you mentioned that air monitoring plans that measure air in a ship high about the worker level is NOT an accurate representation of worker exposure. Is it possible that a Unified command monitoring plan could leave out these "worker of opportunity' vessels and their workers and still be considered a complete plan? That seems like a huge oversight to me.
I would like you and some outside toxicologists to review who is monitoring at the worker level, what is being monitored and the methodology.
Also I would love if someone would address the issue of single chemical exposure limits vs. multiple exposure limits. If I get 90 ppb of one chemical with a 100 ppb threshold and 90 ppb of another chemical with a 100 ppb threshold what does that mean? Isn't it true that toxicity tests to determine the impact of multiple chemicals at the same aren't done?
In order to find out the additive nature of exposure we would need to do tests on more than one chemical at a time and I'm pretty sure those tests simply aren't done. It seems irresponsible to simply look at multiple single chemical exposure levels as under threshold limits and safe and never consider the impact of multiple chemicals under threshold limits. Under limit Corexit 9527 may be safe and under limit Benzene may be safe but what about simultaneous exposure?
In addition it would be useful to have the ability to map the locations and times workers got sick to any available data. That might help show that it wasn't "food poisoning" as the BP CEO has claimed or "heat stroke" as some OSHA officials are claiming.
Finally, paper masks? Really? For VOC? Come ON!
ronald gochenour — Jul 9 2010 09:11 AM
the president with out a heart Oil disaster day 80 in the gulf. go to the gulf today you have the right not to go to the gulf. you don't have the right not to send everything we have to fight the disaster in the gulf. we will not and cannot trust BP. it is hard for me to believe that the oil is on shore and BP and the government are not making every effort to clean up the oil. I would like to see you make EPA show air and water test. we need to know why people are getting sick. help the people in the gulf with food, loans, work, make sure no one looses their home and boats from BP oil spill. I need to know how much wildlife is died from the oil spill the people need to see all the dead. how many people in the water clean up all the dead fish. news media not showing all the dead and all the oil I thank someone in the fed government making it hard for them to do their jobs. I thank it is hard for people to believe that the fed government has made a bigger mistake in the gulf this time. what I would like to see happen is the president go to the gulf and make it clear the news media can go anywhere to report on the oil spill. call up all national guard to go to the gulf and make sure that BP is not doing anything wrong like putting sand over oil on the shore. call up all the wildlife people to go to the gulf to help with saving all the wildlife that has not died.call up all the people that know how to clean up oil on the sand. do not call up people that only want to say No to everything . If someone has a good idea how to clean up the oil on shore try something........my name is Ronald GOCHENOUR I have lived in VA all my 55 years I vote democrat .2 times now I have seen on t.v.the worst of what can happen in the gulf and the fed government very poor job.
people in your administration need to resigned.no more drilling in the gulf.go to the gulf and fund-raise for all the people in the gulf .oil spill