Oil Spill's First Human Casualty Speaks to Broader Toll

An endless oil spill is not the way we should be creating jobs in this struggling economy. Yet for so many out-of-work Gulf fisherman, shrimpers and rig workers, this is what it's come down to.

More and more, we're finding out what a dirty and hazardous job being a spill cleanup worker really is: illness, toxic chemical exposure, and now a suicide are among the consequences workers and their families have suffered.

The conditions are hot -- upwards of 100 degrees in the sticky breeze. The work is toxic -- workers have complained of headaches, nauseau, and respiratory irritation. Depression, fear and uncertainty suffuse the humid air -- fishermans' wives told Mother Jones' about the trauma and uncertainty they face as they wait for claim checks. BP has capped their husbands cleanup worker wages at $200 a day, a sum much less than they usually earn.

The worst story yet is one of 25-year charter boat captain and father of two. Allen Kruse, 55, shot himself in the head Wednesday on the Alabama dock on his boat, The Rookie. He spent recent weeks working as a BP contractor to spot oil and lay out boom, and his friends and wife knew him to be "emotionally devastated" by the entire course of events beginning on April 20th, when the Deepwater Horizon was set aflame and his business came to an end. 

CBS News reports how the region's social service workers are encountering an influx of mental health cases in the wake of the spill. The can include depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic issues. "The oil spill is like a cancer or tumor," said Michele Many, a Louisiana social worker. "It is creeping and unpredictable from whether people will have livelihoods or health issues later from helping clean it up. You just don't know whether it is benign or malignant."

In Grand Isle, Louisiana, families are actually frightened of the cleanup workers, some of whom are ex-convicts, who have overwhelmed the towns' small population.

Physical illness is rising too.Propublica reports that, following criticism of its illness data, the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command recently tripled its count of sick workers from a report two weeks ago. There have been 307 Gulf cleanup workers who reported illness and 424 reports of injuries, far more than the 86 illnesses reported earlier.  Fewer than ten percent received medical treatment.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said yesterday that many cleanup workers are minorities who have not received proper safety training in their spoken languages. She also laid it out point-blank yesterday for BP. "We want you to make a profit but not at the expense of killing your employees."

Photo credit: NOAA