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Blood spilled in PB tragedy

The endless flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico is overshadowing the blood spilt and the blood to come from this tragedy.

The endless flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico is overshadowing the blood spilt and the blood to come from this tragedy.

Eleven workers died in the April 20 the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion off the Louisiana coastline.

Transocean, the drilling contractor that leased the oil rig to British Petroleum (BP), lists them as “missing” on its website, which means the coast guard did not find their bodies.

Seventeen were injured, suffering burns, broken bones, and the suffocation of smoke inhalation. Fortunately, 98 others escaped unharmed.

Offshore oil rigs are danger zones for workers.

According to this sector’s regulator, the U.S. Minerals Management Service, 105 people have died with 1,838 people injured, in oil rig accidents and spills in the past 13 years.

The Gulf of Mexico is particularly deadly.

It outstrips the Pacific region for both deaths and injuries. Between 2006 and 2009, 30 people have died and 1,347 were injured, compared to the Pacific region’s zero fatalities and 72 injured.

But the risk the explosion poses to workers does not end with the explosion nor with oil rig workers themselves.

The 20,000 workers recruited and deployed to deal with the oil spill, from laying down water barriers to raking oil out of beaches, face a lesser-known danger: over-exposure to petroleum products.

Few television viewers are thinking about the risks facing the clean-up crews, even as they sympathize with the wild birds covered in oil on Louisiana beaches.

If more than 160 million litres of oil is hard on the Gulf’s wildlife, think what it can do to the human population.

Crude oil breaks down into hundreds of different chemicals.

Exposure on the skin or by inhaling oil droplets in the air leads to, among other effects, damage ranging from headaches and dizziness to a damaged nervous system or even cancer.

These effects can linger for years, depending on the length of exposure and whether proper safety gear was used.

Then there are more than three million litres of oil dispersants, which the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency authorized for underwater and surface use only in the face of this emergency. Workers are being paid $10/hour for up to 12 hour days, get four hours training, have minimal safety gear, sometimes just a handkerchief and gloves, and then are deployed into a toxic zone.

Occupational safety training gets short shrift in emergencies, despite the risks of hiring thousands of inexperienced people to do the grunt work.

Major media outlets are already reporting on workers going to hospital. This is just the beginning.

While British Petroleum is footing the bill for their wages, it must also create a long-term health insurance plan for these workers to ensure they are taken care of in a country where quality health care is unavailable to the very people who would take a $10/hour job cleaning up an oil spill. Workers, too, must organize, demand and use the respirators, clean-up suits and gear they need to protect themselves from further harm.

This oil spill is bad enough. We must not add workers’ blood to this disaster.

Peter Moore is a freelance writer based in Ottawa and former editor of the Industrial Worker newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World.