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http://www.newsweek.com/deepwater-horizon-bp-oil-spill-sickened-gulf-residents-508362

DEEPWATER HORIZON OIL DISASTER EXTENDS ITS TOXIC REACH

BY LINDA MARSA ON 10/10/16

Scott Porter remembers the last time he felt completely well. It was a warm, clear day with sparkling blue skies in June 2010. A deep-sea diver and marine biologist, he was taking a TV news crew out on a 30-foot catamaran to one of his favorite spots in the Gulf of Mexico, a coral reef growing on an abandoned oil platform at Main Pass 311. It lies about 40 miles north of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which had exploded six weeks earlier. The rig’s severely damaged wellhead a mile below the surface was still gushing thousands of barrels of oil a day—and ongoing coverage of the accident continued to generate headlines. Federal officials had assured Porter that the water around the reef was safe, but the acrid smell of crude permeated the air. The minute he plunged into the murky seas, he found himself immersed in a 40-foot-thick mucous plume of oil and chemical dispersants.

“At midday, it’s normally light enough to read a book even 60 feet below,” Porter says. “But the oil blocked out so much sunlight, I couldn’t read my gauges.” Porter recalled the incident while picking over heaping platters of boiled shrimp and crawfish, specialties at Big Al’s, a popular Cajun-style eatery in Houma, about 60 miles southwest of New Orleans—and in the heart of Louisiana oil country. Porter, who consults for oil companies and environmental groups, lives nearby in this bustling metropolis of 30,000. It’s a starting point for fishermen headed to the Gulf and for oil crews that bunk in chain hotels crowded along the town’s main drag before heading out to the rigs for two- to three-week stints.

Porter has spent a lot of time underwater—more than 6,000 dives over a 20-year career, he estimates—but that dive was different. “I felt like I was marinating in a vat of industrial solvents,” scowls the 49-year-old native of the Texarkana twin cities. When he got home that night, he developed a terribly itchy skin rash. He felt as if his lungs were seared by fire, with an intense burning sensation in his chest that he knew from experience was chemical pneumonia, caused by inhaling harsh solvents. But he kept diving. And after each subsequent dive, he developed more ailments—chest colds, a burning throat, pounding migraines, bone-deep lethargy and nausea. 

Many other Gulf residents are stricken with some of the same odd symptoms—and more. They include migraines, skin rashes, bloody diarrhea, bouts of pneumonia, nausea, seizures, muscle cramps, profound depression and anxiety, severe mental fuzziness and even blackouts.

Smoke billows from a controlled burn of spilled oil off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico coast line on June 13, 2010. Millions of gallons of oil poured into the Gulf following the April 20, 2010 explosion on an offshore rig killed 11 workers and ruptured BP's deep-sea well.SEAN GARDNER/REUTERS

The oil spill, the worst in maritime history, dumped 4.2 million barrels of oil,

 and officials released 1.8 million gallons of Corexit, a chemical dispersant

 used to break up the oil, into the Gulf before the well was sealed. Six years

 later, controversy still rages about the wisdom of carpet-bombing the Gulf

 with these chemicals, and newly released documents reveal that government

scientists expressed concern at the time about the health consequences of 

mixing such large quantities of dispersants with the millions of barrels of

 sweet crude. Occupational health experts now believe it created a toxic mix

 that sickened thousands of locals—including some of the 47,000 people that

 worked in some capacity on BP’s cleanup operation—crippling them with

 chemically induced illnesses that doctors are unable to treat.

“There is a core of very sick patients who undoubtedly will be ill for the

 remainder of their lives as the result of exposure to chemicals involved in

 the Deepwater Horizon tragedy,” says Dr. Michael Robichaux, an ear, nose

 and throat specialist in south Louisiana and a former state senator.

In the initial aftermath of the spill, Robichaux treated dozens of people,

 including Porter. They ranged from a 3-year-old boy, who had seizures from

 swimming in a pool next to an oil-soaked beach, to a cleanup worker who

 was blinded when his optic nerves were irreversibly scarred after exposure

 to chemicals near the oil booms. A family friend, the wife of a fisherman who

 worked on one of the cleanup boats, had developed a leukemia-like blood

 disorder that apparently stemmed from washing her husband’s oil-drenched

 clothes. “A lot of the women were no longer menstruating, or their

 menstrual cycles had gone out of whack,” recalls Robichaux. “I was seeing a

 lot of people—children even—who had seizures, dizziness and all sorts of

 other neurological problems.”

Porter buttonholed everyone he could think of—medical specialists, federal

 officials, local politicians and even his sister-in-law, who is a family doctor in

 Memphis, Tennessee—to find out exactly what he had been exposed to but

 never got satisfactory answers. “I knew the dangerous nature of these

compounds, but they kept telling us it was perfectly safe,” says the marine 

scientist. He then made the connection himself, especially when his dive 

partners began experiencing even scarier symptoms, like uncontrollable ear 

and nose bleeds, and bloody stool.

“That set off alarms,” recalls Porter, who came to the bleak conclusion that 

he was being sickened simply by being in the water. He found out later that 

the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wouldn’t allow its 

divers in the contaminated waters, according to documents obtained by the 

Government Accountability Project. In the years since, he’s suffered from 

chest pains and bouts of vertigo, and in the middle of conversations he 

sometimes experiences memory lapses that make him feel as if his brain 

were stuck in first gear. “I forget everything the minute I read it,” he admits, 

“and my girlfriend says I’m getting worse.”

Many of the ailments plaguing workers and residents in the Gulf region

 mirror what has been seen after previous spills, such as that of the Exxon 

Valdez, where many workers claimed they suffered from brain damage from 

exposure to the neurotoxins in the oil. Others suffered from infertility, 

endocrine disorders, heart damage, chronic respiratory ills, premature

aging, a decline in cognitive function, long-term depression and nerve

damage, according to numerous studies.

“Exposure to organic solvents causes the same intellectual effect as lead 

poisoning,” says Dr. Michael Harbut, a professor at Michigan State 

University and an environmental and occupational health expert who served 

as a consultant for the plaintiffs on the medical class-action suit filed against 

BP. Among those who were most heavily exposed, he warns, “we’ll see 

chronic adverse health effects, including liver and kidney disease, birth 

defects and developmental disorders. Over time, we’ll see a bump in certain 

cancers that are related to industrial solvents, such as leukemia, lymphomas 

and lung and skin cancers.”

Oil pollution activist Riki Ott hugs Lorrie Williams, center, as Bud Waltman, left, looks on at a meeting for Gulf Coast residents who have health problems possibly related to the BP oil spill, on April 18, 2011 in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Williams lives blocks away from the coastline and says she has developed a litany of illnesses, including lung polyps and liver, thyroid and blood problems. MARIO TAMA/GETTY

Combining dispersants with oil unleashes hazardous substances contained

in crude, such as heavy metals, benzene, hexane and toluene, which are

known carcinogens that can also cause brain damage. Dispersants like

Corexit are a mixture of solvents and surfactants that break down the oil 

into tiny droplets to make them more easily absorbed into the ground and

eaten by microorganisms. But it also makes the toxic parts of the oil small 

enough to seep through the skin and spread throughout the body.

What’s worse is that when the ocean water evaporates, the chemicals

become aerosolized and are carried aloft by the high winds on the Gulf,

sickening people who inhale the tainted air. “We were getting calls night and

day. The fumes were choking folks along the coast, and people were 

trapped,” recalls Marylee Orr, a longtime environmental activist in Baton

Rouge and executive director of the Louisiana Environmental Action

Network. “It’s not like they could just walk away from their homes or their

jobs.”

Even in May 2010, in the first few weeks of the cleanup, government 

scientists were already worried about this toxic brew, newly released 

documents reveal.

By October 2010, so many locals had gotten ill and filed lawsuits that the 

district court judge pulled them together into a class-action suit to avoid 

clogging up the courts with piecemeal litigation. In 2012, BP agreed to a 

complex class-action $7.8 billion medical settlement that would compensate 

victims up to $60,700 per person and allowed people to file further claims if 

they developed more serious problems. More than 37,500 victims have filed 

claims, according to the latest figures from the claims administrator, yet 

only a tiny fraction of the claims have been paid. Countless more have opted 

out of the settlement and are pursuing individual lawsuits, and it may be 

many years before they see any money.

“These health problems are ongoing and in some cases getting worse,” says 

Shanna Devine, an investigator with the Government Accountability Project. 

“Based on the dozens of people I’ve spoken with and their neighbors, the 

cancer rates are going up dramatically since the spill took place. The legal 

battle has been horrible—people can’t make their mortgages, and the 

economic impact has been devastating.”

Both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and BP insist that Corexit 

itself is as safe as dishwashing liquid; the ingredients in the dispersants are 

also found in household cleaners, hand lotion and cosmetics. But the safety 

manual put out by Nalco, the maker of Corexit, lists some of these 

chemicals’ health effects: chemical pneumonia, eye irritations, dermatitis, 

nausea and internal bleeding. One type of Corexit even contains 

butoxyethanol, which has been linked to a host of hazards, including 

respiratory ills, headaches, infertility in women and miscarriages.

The EPA held recent public hearings raising questions about the wisdom of 

using dispersants to contain spills. Proposed EPA rule changes would create 

tighter standards for toxicity tests, stricter environmental monitoring, 

periodic reviews of how dispersants are used during spills and a ban on their 

use in freshwater, among other provisions. But they won’t go into effect until 

2018.

In the meantime, public health experts continue to grapple with the health

consequences of this disaster. The National Institute of Environmental 

Health Sciences is in the midst of a 10-year study tracking 33,000 people 

exposed to the oil. Researchers recruited participants from every part of the 

Gulf, ranging from fishermen and cleanup workers to people working on rigs 

siphoning off oil and operating the vessels and aircraft that were spraying 

dispersants into the water. They’ve already found higher rates of respiratory 

problems, skin conditions and depression. But it could be several years 

before they confirm what other ills came from the disaster. Until then, 

officials cannot be sure what they should have done differently. The next oil 

spill could be little more than an opportunity to make all the same mistakes.