On the recordJune 23, 2010
According to the latest figures from OSHA, at this time there are over 27,000 workers employed by BP or its contractors and more than 2,000 Federal employees directly involved in the massive cleanup operation now underway in the gulf coast. At a hearing last week, another Federal agency, the CDC, tried to assure Congress that it was doing all it could to keep these workers safe and that it is closely tracking surveillance data across the Gulf Coast States for health effects that may be related to the oil spill. This was good to hear. But a workshop held by the Institute of Medicine down in New Orleans this week made one thing abundantly clear. When there are that many people engaged in such a complex cleanup effort of such unprecedented size over such an unforeseeably long time, the true danger levels for exposure simply are not known. As a story in USA Today put it: 'While some health officials say they don't think long-term illnesses are likely, they've never seen pollution of this scale, and there are just too many unknowns to say for sure.'
