“…heat, falls, drowning, fatigue, sharp objects, bites from insects, snakes and other native species…exposure to crude oil, oil byproducts, dispersants, cleaning products, and other chemicals used in the cleanup. ”
- David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health at the U.S. Department of Labor, on the potential hazards facing cleanup workers
Worker safety in the Gulf cleanup environment has become a complicated affair, with the process muddled by several groups with different agendas. OSHA, for their part, has taken the helm in protecting the cleanup workers. Their efforts on the coast illuminate the folly of ceding responsibility for offshore workers’ safety to different organizations (we’ll touch on that later). OSHA works in compliance with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), which does a commendable job of collecting field data to study the long-term effects of the gulf cleanup environment on worker health. Those two organizations play watchdog to BP, ensuring that the company’s lofty-sounding standards of safety match the realities on the beach. For every claim of peerless safety compliance, there seems to be evidence of significant procedural lapses. Add to this BP’s tense relationship with the media – one that’s much worse than BP’s willing to admit – and it’s clear to see why strict oversight is needed, and how even that may not be enough to feel confident in BP’s practices when no one is looking.
Here’s each organization’s responsibility:
OSHA (David Michaels’ testimony at the June 23 hearing can be seen here.)
- Personnel present at each beach cleanup staging area
- 146 workers in the Gulf region, with 25 assigned specifically to the cleanup
- 1100 inspections
- 500 environmental samples
- Notify BP after each specific safety complaint from workers
- Follow-up to determine compliance
- Ensure that all training and proper equipment is provided free-of-charge
As of early July, OSHA had issued no penalties as a result of their inspections.
NIOSH (Testimony of Dr. John Howard, Director of NIOSH can be seen here.)
- Roster all workers involved in the cleanup response (more than 14,000 to date)
- Conduct health surveillance to identify trends in injury and illness reports
- Conduct health hazard evaluations of reported illnesses of workers
These tasks are vital to worker safety, and BP appears to have passed the test thus far. Due diligence must be paid to ensure that safety standards remain high when no one is looking. BP must not be allowed to merely put on its compliant face when the inspectors are around. OSHA and NIOSH workers must be ever present on-site as an ally of the cleanup volunteers, since some in the media have reported lapses in safety protocol stemming from BP’s attempt to save face.
Read the previous post in this series here. (‘The Big Question: Is There a Better Way to Oversee the Safety of Oil Workers?”)
Submitted by Patrick McQueen
Most important: 11 men lost their lives when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20. This is a tribute by Steve Joynt to the 11 men who died on the Deepwater Horizon, “Oil spill Day 100: The 11 men who died on the Deepwater Horizon” We can never lose sight of the human cost of BP’s and others’ malfeasance.