Sports briefs
July 21, 2010
Ernest Tabor
July 23, 2010
Benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene and xylene. Four aromatic hydrocarbons found in the crude oil that’s been enveloping the Gulf that do more than just make up an exotic sounding tongue twister. Exposure to these chemicals in the air at high amounts and for a long period of time could cause adverse health effects, which is a cause for concern involving thousands of workers tied to clean-up efforts.
But experts assert that they have been feverishly testing the air quality, and have not found any cause for concern or the need for respirators yet.
“We’re not finding any elevated levels of any constituents of concern that would require respirators, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are just one of the things that we check for,” said Chief James Rachwal of the United States Coast Guard (USCG).
According to Rachwal, air quality area monitors are run 24 hours a day, and give out readings every hour, and there is a safety boat and air monitoring boat with each taskforce involved in the clean-up.
“There’s no difference between BP workers, Coast Guard, sub-contractors and employees that they’ve hired, so it’s not an exposure to just the workers, our folks are right there with them,” Rachwal said.
Both Rachwal and Cheryl Metzler, a certified industrial hygienist who has been with BP for 29 years, explain that since the oil is coming from below the surface of the water, a lot of the harmful chemicals are absorbed or evaporated.
“Normally the oil is spilled on the surface of the water, so what makes this different is that the release is occurring 5,000 feet below the surface, so by the time it reaches the surface, it’s lost many of those constituents, and benzene is one of them,” Metzler said.
But there’s still great concern from the public regarding the air quality in both the area around the spill and the shoreline, and what remains ahead for those who have been exposed.
“When people worry about chemicals, they’re worried about short term and long term, so you have to look at the conditions or type of exposure to cause acute symptoms or long term symptoms,” said human health toxicologist Glenn Millner, who has been working at the Houma command post since the spill occurred.
“When you’re in your kitchen and you get a whiff of ammonia, that’s acute exposure, so we should not be talking about chronic exposures from an acute episode.”
“When people say ‘is this chemical toxic?’ I say that we shouldn’t be talking about toxic chemicals, because all chemicals are toxic, what we should be talking about is toxic exposure,” Millner continued.
And according to these experts, there has been no toxic exposure.
“Every reported illness gets investigated from the medical side, ” Rachwal said, who also understands that there may be a sense of mistrust regarding BP to the public.
“One of the things we need to press upon is that a certified industrial hygienist holds an oath that they swear to like a doctor, like a professional engineer, like a lawyer; so they have a higher standard regardless of who they work for.”
“There’s a very small number of doctors on the medical side qualified in looking for occupational exposures,” said Rachwal. “We’ve been talking with Dr. Donald Thibodeaux about giving some of the local doctors some of his expertise of what to look for, but Dr. Thibodeaux is personally looking at very reported case.”
Dr. Thibodeaux is a Houma-based doctor who specializes in occupational medicine.
And according to 10 percent of industrial hygienists in America that are employed for spill response and other experts investigating the air quality, the use of respirators at this point in time may cause more harm than good.
“OSHA has a standard that specifies how and when you can wear respirators, and we do direct monitoring through the worker’s breathing space and we do real-time air monitoring to make sure there’s nothing that flows into the breathing space that we weren’t aware of,” said Rachwal.
Thus far, 3,094 samples have been taken along the shoreline with breathing space badges; 1,649 samples taken from Vessels of Opportunity workers; 7,095 samples from offshore workers, and 37 samples taken onshore in the staging areas.
Lee Lemond, a representative of CTECH, a company that measures air quality offshore said VOCs would have to reach 25 parts per million to be a cause for concern.
“We send a daily report that shows the number of measurements that were made and the VOC concentration, and it’s not measuring anything over .1 right now,” Lemond said.
Rachwal explained that most of the injuries that have been reported are due to heat-related stress.
“Heat stress kills people. Think about it, if you were to stand out right now in a plastic suit with a respirator on, you’re going to really have to reduce the workload to about 5-10 minutes,” Rachwal said, who also added that if a worker were to fall overboard wearing a respirator, the filter would fill up with water, causing the worker to choke.
“It is not in BP’s best interest to put anybody’s health at risk, we have enough problems already, why would we, for the sake of a few dollars for a respirator, put somebody’s health at risk? It’s just illogical, it doesn’t make sense,” said BP representative Hugh Deplend.
Rachwal, Metzler and Millner agree.
“A certified industrial hygienist swears his or her good name to these test results,” Rachwal said, again reiterating that all the results are part of a team effort to keep people safe while trying to respond to the oil spill.
“It’s our brothers and sisters out there,” he said.
“My own son is out there on a shrimping boat. To hear negative news on the jobs of the people who are working hard and making sure people are safe becomes disillusioning,” Millner said.
“You can imagine if you were doing your job for over 70 days and then someone says you aren’t trying to keep people safe … the experts are here, and everything is done under a unified command,” he said.
An EPA air-quality receptor, similar to the unit in Port Fourchon, measures the amount of particulates and toxic compounds in the air around Grand Isle. COURTESY PHOTO
