Horrific health issues starting to impact oil cleanup workers

[Ruby the Liberal]

Man alive. This is bad.

LAFITTE, La. More and more stories about sick fishermen are beginning to surface after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The fishermen are working out in the Gulf -- many of them all day, every day -- to clean up the spill. They said they blame their ailments on the chemicals that BP is using.

One fisherman said he felt like he was going to die over the weekend. "I've been coughing up stuff," Gary Burris said. "Your lungs fill up."

Burris, a longtime fisherman who has worked across the Gulf Coast, said he woke up Sunday night feeling drugged and disoriented. "It was like sniffing gasoline or something, and my ears are still popping," Burris said. "I'm coughing up stuff. I feel real weak, tingling feelings."

Marine toxicologist Riki Ott said the chemicals used by BP can wreak havoc on a person's body and even lead to death.

"The volatile, organic carbons, they act like a narcotic on the brain," Ott said. "At high concentrations, what we learned in Exxon Valdez from carcasses of harbor seals and sea otters, it actually fried the brain, (and there were) brain lesions."

SNIP

Burris said that when he went to a doctor after feeling ill on Sunday, the doctor told him his lungs looked like those of a three-pack-a-day smoker, and Burris said he has never smoked.

Full article: http://www.wdsu.com/health/23615203/detail.html

[izquierdista]

1. How could that be??

Isn't HAZWOPER training supposed to provide 100% protection against such happenings?

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. I don't know. It could also be an underlying condition not previously recognized

complicating things.

I just have this really horrible unsettling feeling about those chemicals they are using to hide the oil.

[dipsydoodle]

3. The type of Corexit

used now differs from that used for the Exxon Valdez so I don't understand that comparison.

Wiki Corexit for info.

[izquierdista]

6. Corexit = more profits

If you Google the MSDS for Corexit, you will notice that it is a mix of a little detergent and a lot of :wtf: petroleum distillate?!? Whoever sold the cleanup crew on Corexit would sell sacks of sugar to a diabetic. It's like cleaning your bathroom with the baby's diaper -- it only makes it worse.

[4_TN_TITANS]

9. "It's like cleaning your bathroom with the baby's diaper"

Spot on analogy (no pun intended).

[truedelphi]

7. Wikipedia is edited by any who want to do so.

And why wouldn't the oil companies be paying someone to edit it to their liking?

[Electric Monk]

4. "like sniffing gasoline or something..." Where does gasoline come from again?

Oh, right.

[ReverendDeuce]

5. Sounds like... PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS to me! Cha-ching!

Yes, it's sarcasm.

[Autumn]

8. Must be second hand tobacco smoke

What else could it be. Bastards.