Gulf of Mexico oil spill health concerns take center stage at open housePublished: Wednesday, June 23,Residents worried about the
public health effects of
the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico pressed officials from BP, the Coast Guard and even New Orleans City Hall on Wednesday about
the use of chemical dispersants, the long-term availability of medical care for spill victims and other answers they said are not readily
available.
Rusty Costanza, The Times-PicayuneMac
MacKenzie has some help getting the attention of Mayor Mitch Landrieu
during an open house on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill at the Pavilion of
Two Sisters at City Park on Wednesday.
The questions flew during what was slated as a brief news conference to
kick off a two-hour open house where the public could chat with
employees of federal and state agencies working to plug the gushing
Macondo 252 well and clean up the oil.
Instead, dozens of residents, including many with keen insight into
minute details of the spill response and some who held handmade signs
decrying BP, jockeyed for attention for nearly 40 minutes, shouting
their questions and at times jeering at officials' responses.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu tried to keep the peace, asking participants to "be civil and be kind."
Those in charge provided general assurances that they're doing all
they can to mitigate the damage and to collect and test water and air
samples for contamination, noting that 14 research vessels have been
dispatched around the spot where the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on
April 20
.
On the matter of chemical dispersant, Coast Guard Capt. Roger
Laferriere, the local incident commander, acknowledged that its use is
"absolutely a tradeoff."
"We'd rather not have to use it," he said. "However, the tradeoff is
(that) every day we don't do it is a major oil spill coming to shore and
impacting the environment. ... We are committed to ensuring that you
are not going to be poisoned by this dispersant."
Mathy Stanislaus of the federal Environmental Protection Agency said
his agency also is conducting tests and has directed BP to use skimmers
and to burn oil before employing dispersants, adding that use of the
chemicals has dropped 63 percent compared with its maximum level.
He also defended the EPA against a critic in the crowd who asked why
it's taken "60 days for people to come forward and tell us about this."
"From the very beginning, we have been trying to put out information," Stanislaus said.
Another woman wanted a commitment from BP spokesman Larry Thomas that
the company will continue to pay for medical services "20 years from
now, when people have cancer" and when children who live near the spill
zone may experience post-traumatic stress disorder.
"The BP CEO has said we will be here as long as it takes," Thomas said.
Unlike similar meetings held recently in communities along
Louisiana's lower coast where residents are more directly affected by
the spill, few questions posed during the event at City Park's Pavilion
of the Two Sisters centered on the nuts and bolts of BP's claims
process, designed to cover income lost because of the disaster.
And while public health took center stage, no one asked about
complaints of headaches and nausea lodged recently by cleanup workers on
the front lines.
After the briefing, Megan Lenore and Maya Morris, both of New
Orleans, visited a few tables set up around the room, trying to get
answers to other questions.
As volunteers with the grass-roots group Defenders of the Coast, the
women have spent recent weeks traversing the state's beaches and
documenting their findings, including a crab that appeared to have been
bleached, perhaps by chemical dispersant.
Lenore said she showed a digital image of the crab to an employee of
the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, who encouraged her to
report to the agency the precise location of such discoveries.
The pair also visited the Coast Guard table to report that oiled
beaches often aren't clearly marked, either to warn away residents or to
alert cleanup crews....... continues..
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/gulf_of_mexico_oil_spill_healt.html 
