In May, 2010, concerns about the safety of the clean-up operation culminate in a little-known incident.

Transcript

Prologue.

[Music]

Dan Leone (host): 

The BP oil spill was an atomic bomb of consequences, setting in motion a series of events that are still felt today.

But to really get how the spill went down the way it did, you have to know about something that happened over two decades before, thousands of miles from Louisiana.

What occurred there redirected life paths, including the path of one person who became a central figure warning about health risks in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon blowout. 

Riki Ott:

My name is Dr. Riki Ott and, uh, informally I go by Riki, which is fine for this.

Dan:
Um, and what is the, what is the doctor? What kind of doctor?

Riki Ott:
Oh, um, I have a PhD in marine toxicology from the University of Washington, 1985.

Marine toxicology is the study of chemicals’ effects on aquatic animals and ecosystems. Back in the '80s Riki had some job options – in academia, in government. But she opted for something different.   

Riki Ott:
I had to figure out what I wanted to do, and I thought, “Hmm, I think I'll just go to Alaska, take one summer off, uh, and sort it out.” And thinking about Alaska, I mean, what's a marine biologist to do? So I got a job on a commercial fishing boat, totally fell in love with commercial fishing. Um, the adrenaline rush of it, the scenery. Oh my God. It's like you're fishing in a zoo. Um, and the wildness of this land and the people, the energy level. I just was like, “Okay,” so that summer turned into 27 or eight years.

Riki Ott found a home on top of a hill in Cordova, Alaska – a fishing village that can only be reached by boat or plane. Its 2,500 or so occupants supply the country and the world with pink salmon, sockeye, halibut, list goes on. Cordova hides itself in a snowy mountain range. From above, it appears to nestle against the ocean.

Riki Ott:

I'm like an adrenaline junkie. I was ski racing. I was doing all kinds of, you know, horrible athletic junkie things. [laughs]

Dan:

Can you gimme your, your kind of biggest adrenaline rush story?

[Music: Rich sound designed sequence commences]

Riki Ott:

The Copper River Delta is considered the most dangerous salmon fishery in the entire world. You can get breaking waves of 50 feet high.

Riki Ott:

It was our first year, and everybody knows to keep away from the first year rookies.

Riki Ott:

So here we are, we're going in the breaker patch, and all of a sudden, you know, we were dodging these big walls, like two story high, uh, swells coming down. And all of a sudden, one just is like, we didn't dodge it. And our five ton boat is like surfing down this wave. 

Riki Ott:

Our feet were in the air. Our boat was on its side. It tipped 90 degrees. 

Riki Ott:

And all of a sudden we were upright again.

Being upright again was the good news, the bad news was, their fishing net had gotten wound up, so now their boat couldn't move. She, and her partner Danny, were trapped among the giant crashing waves.

Riki Ott:

It's like time, just like stretched. 

[Music slows, gets dreamy]

Riki Ott:

We were part of the fishermen's co-op and guys had, we learned to ask guys, “What's your one piece of advice you would give rookies?” And one guy had said, “Just remember your net is only a piece of string. If you ever think about cutting it, don't hesitate. Cut it.”

Riki Ott:
And, you know, we, that was our only net. We had hung it. It took us like two weeks to hang it.

Riki Ott:
And we both said at the same time, “It's only a piece of string.” [laughs] And we, Danny whips out his knife again, and he cuts it. 

[Music speeds back up]

Dan:
Okay, so you have, you have this experience. Did you, did you think for a moment about quitting after that?

Riki Ott:
Heck no.

Dan:
[laughs] Okay. 

Riki Ott's adrenaline-fueled blissed-out existence was interrupted on March 24th, 1989.

Alaskans remember this date. Early that morning, someone showed up out of the blue at Riki’s cabin.

Riki Ott:
Bang bang bang on my door. And I'm just like, “What, is there something wrong,” you know? And I open the door and there's Jack Lamb, who's the acting director of Cordova District Fishermen United. And he hiked all the way up my hill to get me. And I'm just looking at him like, [laughs] “What, what are you doing here?” And, um, and Jack's just looking steady at me, and he says, “We've had the big one.”

Dan:
So when he said “the big one,” what did you understand that to mean?

Riki Ott:
That we've had the big tanker wreck that the fishermen all feared. 

An oil tanker called the Exxon Valdez, had an accident. While transporting over 53 million gallons of crude oil, it ran aground in Prince William Sound. Its cargo holds were punctured, and millions of gallons of oil surged into the Gulf of Alaska. Near Cordova.  

Riki Ott:
And…ugh, it was like surreal. It's hardly ever calm in March, okay? So, it was calm, and it was this alpine glow. It was this pink sunrise, um, that was glowing through all the clouds, and it was so calm. And then all of a sudden you come around, and it's like disaster. [laughs] There's this tanker that's, you know, got a red deck on it, and it's sitting on top of this black inky stain on top of this blue water. And there's this swirl of blue haze just coming into the, into the air, and we all instantly got headaches. And I'm like, “This is bad for us.” 

The story of what happened next might sound familiar.

Riki Ott:
The herring run failed. The pink runs fail. We're in trouble.

Oil washed ashore. Wildlife perished in numbers difficult to fathom. Fishing ceased. The community broke down. 

Riki Ott:
Oh, and a former mayor of ours committed suicide. And, and it was like we were all in it together up to that point. And then all of a sudden it's like, “Wait, what?” He left a note saying that the stress was getting too much for him, his bars were closing down, uh, he didn't know when things were gonna get better. 

Efforts to clean the shoreline were failing. And ultimately a dispersant was sprayed. The same dispersant that would be used 21 years later in the aftermath of the BP oil spill: Corexit.

And soon enough, health issues started spreading in Cordova:

Riki Ott:
Headaches, dizziness, nausea, tightness in the chest, trouble breathing, and skin rashes.

Riki Ott:
So the next thing you know, I'm hearing from the guys that are out there, and they're, one of them calls me and says, in a total panic, “I'm peeing oil.”

The health symptoms became so commonplace, Alaskan locals gave them a name. 

Riki Ott:
People did call it the Valdez Crud. And there, the state of Alaska could not ever find a biological causation for it. I mean, I tracked this. If it's a biological causation, there God dang better be a bacteria or something, or a virus. There wasn't.

Using her background as a marine toxicologist, Riki Ott eventually zeroed in on the components of Corexit and came to believe it was partly to blame for the Valdez Crud. 

Riki Ott:
You breathe this stuff, it gets in your body, it gets in your cells, and it's like a time bomb. And it can go off at any time. 

For the next 20 years, Riki warned about the health risks of oil spills and dispersants.

She wrote books, and toured the country trying to keep alive the Exxon Valdez story. She rallied scientists to take action – but wasn't having much success. 

And by April 2010, she found herself kinda burnt out on the issue. 

Riki Ott:
And I happened to be in Madison, Wisconsin. And I stepped out of the hotel room, and there was the paper. And there was, boom, the Deepwater Horizon blowout. And I just stepped over it. My feeling was, “Nope. Already done that. Can't do that again.” I still was sort of in denial. 

She initially refused requests to go down to the Gulf and help out.

Riki Ott:
I just was like, “Nope, nope, nope.” 

But the Deepwater Horizon story was difficult for her to avoid, even if she wanted to. 

Riki Ott:
It occurred to me that everybody, from what I was seeing in the news, was gonna make – the fishermen in particular – were gonna make the same mistakes we had made in Alaska.

Riki Ott:
Thinking that the federal government, the state, the oil industry, they're gonna take care of you? I mean, you're the one that's harmed, you're the victim. 

The magnitude of the BP oil spill dawned on her. In the Exxon Valdez, it was an oil tanker, there was only so much crude that could leak. But the BP spill was surging out of control, from the bottom of the ocean, with no end in sight.

And the amount of Corexit being sprayed dwarfed what was used in Alaska.

History was repeating itself, at a louder volume.  

Riki Ott:
So I said, “Okay, I'm in, uh, can you get me a one-way ticket down to, um, New Orleans?”

From Western Sound and APM Studios, I'm Dan Leone.

This is Ripple.

[Music transition]

When Riki Ott arrived in Louisiana, her mission was to speak to as many fishermen and coastal residents as possible. Especially those who were already participating in the cleanup.  

Riki Ott:
And I just felt like I could kind of accelerate time, accelerate their learning curve. I mean, it took me 13 years to figure out. 

She talked herself into a meeting with the Louisiana Shrimp Association, and met with fishermen. 

Riki Ott:
And they were getting sick.

Riki calls herself a fisherma'am. Her years of experience out on the water helped her make inroads fast. She spoke the language. 

Riki Ott:
I thought, “Okay, this is fishermen. I know fishermen,” you know, they wanna know, like, it's like you're doing a briefing, a brief, and then let them ask the questions, right?

Riki Ott:
So I started doing that across the Gulf, um, training people and, you know, telling 'em, “Okay, this is what we're in for. Let's brace up for it then,” you know. 

Riki made residents aware that a dispersant was being sprayed. She explained what the dispersant was supposed to do and encouraged people to ask, "Is this good for us, or is it bad for us?"

She found that there was a hunger for information that wasn't being fed. 

Riki Ott:
And the talks, they were set to start at like eight o'clock and go to 10 o'clock. Well, that didn't work because people still had questions. So they started at seven o'clock. They started at six o'clock. We still would get done at one or two in the morning. And I would wait until the last person's questions were answered.

Coastal residents who were sick or concerned asked Riki what they should do. She recommended that if possible, they should evacuate. According to her, some took the advice and left the Gulf.

These marathon Q and A’s earned Riki a respect and a nickname…  

Riki Ott:
I was Miss Ricky down there.

In addition to warning fishermen, Riki was trying to rip the media’s attention away from the leaking wellhead and toward the unprecedented use of dispersants and the growing number of health complaints. 

Riki Ott:
I spent the morning until noon working, calling media and talking to media, for three months, four hours a day. 

She also badly wanted answers from an agency that we haven’t discussed very much yet.

Riki Ott:
This stuff was still coming ashore and making people sick. Why is EPA saying this is safe?

Remember I told you about the Unified Command structure? That collaboration between BP, the Coast Guard and a number of agencies in the Obama Administration?

The Environmental Protection Agency was also part of that collaboration to oversee the oil spill response.

The head of the EPA at the time was Lisa Jackson, who had strong ties to New Orleans. 

This is her speaking at a news conference on April 30th, 2010. 

Lisa Jackson:
Now, what I've said to people is, being from this area, it is not unusual for us to face an incident that we know is coming and to be prepared. And the resilience and strength of the people of the Gulf Coast has been what has gotten us through many, many, many a challenge.

This was just 10 days after the blowout, but the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality was already receiving reports that the air – even miles inland – reeked of petroleum. 

Lisa Jackson:
There is a concern about odors, and we do believe that that odor is probably due in part to the spill. There is a large, large sheen. It is a very thin layer, and with, uh, increasing wind and wave activity, you get an aerosol out there, and that moves. Now the question is, what does that mean? We don't have any reason to believe that there's a concern, but we can't answer that question until we get the data. That data, uh, collection has already begun.

The EPA had started monitoring the air and water for toxicity.

Because this was a maritime spill, the EPA didn’t have quite as much authority as the Coast Guard, but the use of dispersants was – at least theoretically – under their purview.

And Riki Ott wasn’t the only person who felt the EPA wasn't sufficiently flexing the authority they did have. 

[Door squeaks, door opens] 

Dan:
Howdy, Wilma.

Wilma Subra:
Welcome, finally.

Dan:
I made it – 

This is chemist Wilma Subra. Reason she’s saying “finally” is because my rental car got a flat tire, and I was late. 

Dan:
– with a brand new tire. 

Wilma Subra:
You have a whole new car or just a tire?

Dan:
Just a tire. [laughs]

Wilma's based out in New Iberia, Louisiana – southeast of Lafayette.

She's got over five decades experience as a chemist. 

Her relationship with the EPA is something of a soap opera. She used to consult for them, but became disillusioned; she was convinced that health risks to communities weren’t being properly addressed by the agency. So Wilma started her own company, and became a technical advisor for the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. 

Her expertise in testing for toxicity at spill sites, and her successful advocacy in getting them cleaned up, earned her a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999 – a “Genius Grant,” as it’s called.

So her knowledge and skills were still sought after by the EPA in 2010 – post Deepwater. 

Wilma Subra:
I work with the people at EPA, all the time. All the time. On, on sites that I'm working on. And I can speak to 'em, and they know what I say is usually correct and based on correct information.

Wilma was furnishing the EPA with information during the oil spill.

One of her first efforts was to address concerns about the safety of the seafood. 

Wilma Subra:
So one of the projects we did was, I taught fishermen how to collect samples and preserve the samples. And then we took 'em to the lab in Galveston with the university there and had 'em tested.

Dan:
What'd you find?

Wilma Subra:
We found all the components of the crude and the components of the dispersant. 

Wilma  Subra:
So then we calculated, if you were a 20 pound child, you could eat this much shrimp. 

Dan:
And what amounts did you come up with? I know it's been a long time. 

Wilma Subra:
A third of a serving, a fourth of a serving, or like two shrimp.

Dan:
And any more than that…

Wilma Subra:
Was going to give you over the toxicity level in your body. 

Just like Riki, being an expert on chemicals and toxicity made Wilma a lightning rod for cleanup workers and coastal residents. Her phone was ringing off the hook. 

She and Riki were growing increasingly bothered by what they were hearing. Here’s Riki again.

Riki Ott:
Dispersants were being sprayed. My phone went berserk. 

She was getting calls from Vietnam War veterans.

And they were like screaming in the phone, um, “They did this to us in 'Nam!” 

Riki and Wilma were both getting reports that airplanes were spraying dispersants where they shouldn’t have been. 

Wilma Subra:
I'd get calls from the rigs offshore, and they'd say, “They're spraying us with the Corexit every night, every night.” And I'd call EPA and they'd say, “Wilma, we're not spraying where there are people, and we're not spraying where there are mammals.” 

Dan:
Well, I'm, I'm sorry to stop you. Did you say they were being sprayed at night?

Wilma Subra:
At night, yeah.

The reason I got hung up on that was because I had learned that spraying at night wasn't allowed by the EPA.  

Wilma Subra:
And EPA is saying, “That's not what they're supposed to be doing.” I said, “Well, these guys are not lying to me. They are on the rigs offshore.” 

Wilma Subra :
And then people on the shore, who lived on the shore, said they'd be out sitting on their patio, and they'd get sprayed with the dispersant on shore. So they weren't even supposed to be spraying people on shore, much less people offshore. 

This tracked with what I heard from cleanup workers, that people were sprayed by dispersants from aircraft. 

We reached out to the Coast Guard requesting an interview or written comment to address questions we had about the use of dispersants during the cleanup; they didn't make anyone available to comment – nor did they provide written comment – on these questions.   

Riki Ott and Wilma Subra were both disturbed by what they believed was the VOO workers' inadequate training on how to safely work around chemicals.

But of all their concerns, there was one in particular that seemed to arouse the most outrage in them.   

Wilma Subra:
So the most alarming was the workers not being provided with protective gear and respirators. Sent out in the boat, not protected. And they're hauling in and it's all over them. It's all over them.

Wilma – again – seemed to be corroborating what I heard from the cleanup workers, that they weren't provided with respirators. In my conversations with Riki and Wilma, they always found their way back to this point: 

Riki Ott:
Nobody was wearing respirators.

Wilma Subra:
And they knew enough to want those things.

Riki Ott:
I said, what?

Wilma Subra:
…not giving them the protective gear and not giving them the respirators….

Riki Ott:
Okay, this is ridiculous. 

Riki Ott:

We need to get respirators out to the fishermen.  

We reached out to BP, requesting comment on reports that cleanup workers were refused respirators. BP didn't respond to our request. 

In 2010, as the cleanup progressed and more scrutiny was paid to Corexit, one piece of information started to spread: Corexit had been banned in over a dozen countries. It was even banned in the United Kingdom, where BP was based. 

The pressure was rising on the EPA to give clear answers about the safety risks of Corexit, and to crack down on BP's use.

But there was a problem. It wasn't clear that the EPA actually had the authority to tell BP what to do.

More Ripple after this. We'll be right back. 

[Break]

During the cleanup of the BP oil spill, the head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, was in a tricky spot.

Under the Clean Water Act, the EPA is required to have on hand a National Contingency Plan, or NCP. It’s a set of rules and guidelines to follow in the event of a toxic spill. 

After the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, the EPA updated the National Contingency Plan to reflect the lessons learned from that disaster. They issued a revised NCP in 1994.

But the Exxon Valdez spill was a fraction of the size of the BP oil spill. So even the revised NCP seems ill prepared for a spill of this magnitude and complexity. And this is causing problems. 

Lisa Jackson:
In the use of dispersants, we are faced with environmental trade-offs. We know that surface use of dispersants decreases the environmental risk to shorelines and organisms at the surface. 

Lisa Jackson:
But we are also deeply concerned about the things we do not know. The long-term effects on aquatic life are still unknown, and we must make sure that the dispersants that are used are as non-toxic as possible. 

The EPA is required by law to maintain a list of dispersants available to be used in the event of an oil spill.

To get a dispersant on that list – a manufacturer has to submit data about the product's toxicity and effectiveness. But the EPA doesn't run studies to confirm that data, they only review it.

When some toxicologists and reporters take a look at the data, they point out that Corexit is one of the least effective and one of the most toxic chemicals that the EPA has shortlisted. Raising the question: why is it being used? 

Lisa Jackson:
We are working with manufacturers, with BP, and with others to get less toxic dispersants to the response site as quickly as possible. I am increasingly concerned that EPA can and should do more.

By May 20th, 2010, hundreds of thousands of gallons of Corexit have been sprayed. And the EPA decides to take action. They make an attempt to reign in BP. They issue a directive telling BP that they have 24 hours to choose a less toxic dispersant from the list.

BP responds to that directive. And their response to the EPA is: No. We're going to keep using Corexit. BP justifies this by saying that the other dispersants on the list might have unintended consequences. And BP says that one of the most important things to consider is availability. They tell the EPA that they have a stockpile of Corexit, so that's what they're going to continue to use.

At another press conference, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson pushes back on BP. 

Lisa Jackson:
We have made it clear to BP that we are not satisfied that BP has done an extensive enough analysis of other dispersant options. We expect BP to keep evaluating other options. BP's response to our directive was insufficient. And we are concerned that BP seemed, in their response, more interested in defending their initial decisions than analyzing possible better options.

BP just disregarding the EPA's directive raises some questions on Capitol Hill. Later on, when the Senate holds hearings about the use of dispersants, Senator Barbara Mikulski grills Jackson about her jurisdictional authority. 

Barbara Mikulski:
Do you have the power to ban or limit the use of dispersants? What power do you have to act?

Lisa Jackson:
The, uh, National Incident Commander is retired admiral Thad Allen.

Barbara Mikulski:
Mm-hmm. So can you ban dispersants or limit their use, or does he have to give the approval?

Lisa Jackson:
Can I personally? Uh, I I think it is a matter of untested law as to whether EPA, there is no permit that EPA has given to allow use of these dispersants. So I would not know, and I'm not an attorney. Uh, but perhaps – 

Barbara Mikulski:
No, but you are the head of EPA. Could you have the power to act unilaterally?

Lisa Jackson:
I, I believe I do Chairman, but I do want my lawyers to get you a response on the record. 

Barbara Mikulski:
I know, but, but that's a question you needed to know from day one, Ms. Jackson. 

Barbara Mikulski:
I believe that often we're told, “Don't worry honey, we'll take care of you and it won't hurt.” We only then find out that a very good product, what we thought was a good product, turns out to have vile consequences.

I don't want dispersants to be the Agent Orange of this oil spill.

On May 26th, 2010, the EPA tries a different approach to reign in BP. They issue a new directive. And this time, instead of telling BP to choose a less toxic dispersant, they direct them to stop spraying Corexit from the air to the surface of the water. 

Lisa Jackson:
I'm still recommending as strongly as I can, uh, that we minimize, absolutely minimize, and I'm talking about a significant reduction, uh, in, uh, use of dispersants.

The directive states that BP needs to cut back the total usage of Corexit by 75%.

And you might expect that BP refuses this directive as well… but actually, for whatever reason, they don't. BP says that they have started to reduce their use of dispersants and that they are working towards the goals set by the EPA.

[Music builds]

I started looking into this, and I noticed that what happens next is BP almost immediately begins applying for exemptions to the directive.

So the May 26th directive from the EPA states that BP can only spray on the surface in rare cases. If they want that rare exemption, BP has to make a request in writing to an authority called the Federal On-Scene Coordinator.

At the time, the Federal On-Scene Coordinator was Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry. Under the NCP, Landry’s job was basically to oversee the oil spill response, and she also worked closely with BP COO Doug Suttles. Under the EPA's directive, it's entirely up to Landry whether or not to grant BP's exemption requests.

I found these documents. I tracked the amounts BP requested, whether or not they were approved, and noted anything that seemed fishy along the way.

The EPA’s directive on reducing the use of Corexit was issued on May 26th. The first exemption request is made only two days later. It’s filed by BP COO Doug Suttles. He writes:

“BP has located a large dispersible oil slick approximately 90 miles southeast of Houma, Louisiana.”

He ends by requesting an exemption to use up to 15,000 gallons of Corexit over a span of 12 hours.

This exemption is approved by Mary Landry, on the same day it's submitted.

[Music picks up in tempo and intensity] 

Pilot:

Spray on.

Co-pilot:

Spray on.

Pilot:

Spray on.

The very next day, May 29th – Doug Suttles submits two more exemption requests. One is for 19,000 gallons. This is again immediately approved by Mary Landry.

The second exemption request is different.

Suttles requests up to 6,000 gallons per calendar day to be used at the source control site – presumably the ocean above the leaking wellhead. But he specifies no date in which this request would expire.

He also requests to use more than 6,000 gallons per day at the source site if BP deems it necessary for safety.

This request for seemingly unlimited use of Corexit appears to violate the EPA directive in a couple ways. The directive states that exemption requests have to include weather conditions, and this one… does not. 

The directive also asks for “mechanical or means for removal that were considered and the reason they were not used.” Suttles does not provide this information either.

But regardless of those omissions, Mary Landry approves this request the same day it is submitted. Taking the request at its word, BP now has the authority to spray any amount over 6,000 gallons at the source control site indefinitely.   

The very next day, May 30th, Doug Suttles files yet another exemption request. This request is also surprising, because it’s requesting authorization for something that already happened. Suttles acknowledges previously unreported instances of surface spraying on May 27th and 28th. He requests retroactive approval of those occurrences.

Again, Mary Landry approves the request the same day it is submitted.

Then there’s a changing of the guard. A James A. Watson takes over for Mary Landry as Federal On-Scene Coordinator. Exemption requests are filed every single day from June 2nd to June 6th, and they’re all approved on the same day. 

[Music rings out]

From the date the EPA directive is issued, May 26th, to July 11th, exemption requests are filed nearly every single day. Sometimes by BP COO Doug Suttles, and sometimes by Houma Unified Command. In all but a few instances, they are approved by the Federal On-Scene Coordinator the same day, or the following day. These exemptions were only meant for rare cases.

Over 700,000 gallons had been sprayed on May 26th, when the EPA asked BP to reduce dispersant spraying by 75%. By the end of the spraying, on July 19th, 1.84 million total gallons had reportedly been sprayed. 

We reached out to the Coast Guard, seeking comment on the decision-making processes of the Federal On-Scene Coordinators – the Coast Guard didn't make anyone available to answer our questions on that topic. 

So, it appears the EPA did try to reign in the use of dispersants. And they weren't the only ones trying…

Riki Ott:
I knew from Exxon Valdez that dispersants needed to be banned and that workers needed to be protected. 

Riki Ott and Wilma Subra tell a story of a chaotic cleanup operation. Planes spraying dispersants when and where they weren’t supposed to. Inadequately trained cleanup workers spending days surrounded by toxic chemicals with no respirators to protect them. 

Riki Ott:
Uh, but we could not get dispersants banned. 

For all their efforts, there were just too many forces working against them.

Wilma Subra:
The workers didn't have any liquids provided to them. 

Wilma Subra:
It was hot, and they didn't have anything to drink. So they weren't attending to the workers that they were engaging. They didn't have any shade, and mostly on the beach, but the ones in the boats as well.

Wilma says she did manage to convince her contacts at OSHA to provide more shade and more fluids to the cleanup workers. But… 

Wilma Subra:
…still, no respirators.

[Music rises] 

Hearing all this, I thought, “If this were truly the reality along the coast in 2010, it would only be a matter of time before something went really obviously wrong.”

And something did go wrong. Most of us just never heard anything about it.

We're gonna get into it after the break. We’ll be right back.

[Break]

[Music]

Dispersants never quite made their way into the Deepwater Horizon story that lodged in the public consciousness. But they might have come close.

A while back, Ripple's senior reporter, Betsy Shepherd, told me she found something.

Betsy said something happened in this three day period in May 2010, where apparently all hell broke loose.  

Betsy Shepherd: 

While I was doing archival research on BP's use of dispersants and their response to the EPA’s directive on May 26th, I came across a really dramatic news story about something that also happened that day.

Reporter:
And the most mammoth oil spill in American history is about to become the most mammoth oil cleanup ever. 

Reporter:

And seven workers cleaning up the spill had to be hospitalized. Headaches and nausea, doctors blamed chemical irritation and the heat. 

Dan:
Wait, seven workers had to be hospitalized on May 26th?

Betsy Shepherd:
That's right. And, you know, previously we'd heard about health complaints, but this was the first time that we heard of a medical crisis happening to cleanup workers where it is suspected that they were sick because of chemical exposure.

Betsy Shepherd:
There was a scarcity of coverage on the event. As I started digging, trying to find more details about this, I did find a more in-depth report from Democracy Now. 

Democracy Now Reporter:
In Louisiana, seven fishermen involved in the cleanup of the BP oil spill were hospitalized on Wednesday after reporting nausea, dizziness, headaches, and chest pains. As a precautionary measure, the Unified Command has ordered all 125 commercial ships helping with the cleanup in Bretton Sound, Louisiana, to return to land.

Amy Goodman:
We're joined now in New Orleans by Clint Guidry, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association. Clint Guidry, the fishermen, the cleanup workers who've been brought to the hospital, what do you understand about their condition and who they are?

Clint Guidry:
Um, I haven't, I, I I, I'm not gonna say any names. It's some people that I know. Uh, when I’d left last night at the hospital, these workers were, I was being told by the emergency room people that they were okay, and they were being stabilized. 

Betsy Shepherd:
So, the following day, on May 27th, the Coast Guard's Meredith Austin gives an update on the spill, and she addresses the incident. 

Meredith Austin:
Good afternoon. The safety of our team members is our number one priority, and the Coast Guard, BP, and OSHA are currently conducting an investigation, which includes air sampling, checking food and water, and interviewing crew members to determine what might have caused the symptoms. It's important to keep in mind that there are other factors which may potentially cause these sorts of symptoms. These factors range from fatigue, working in hot weather, dehydration, and even the smell of petroleum from the spill may affect some individuals.

Betsy Shepherd:
And a journalist who's on the conference call challenges these other causes.

Unidentified voice:
Your first question comes from Janet McConaughey with Associated Press. 

Janet McConaughey:

Okay. That, um, are you aware that the emergency room doctor has said that all of the symptoms were, uh, typical of chemical exposure and that according to the, uh, hospital spokesman, he did not think that, uh, heat was a, was a, uh, factor?

Meredith Austin:
Uh, no ma'am. I was not aware that the, the doctor in the emergency room said that, and our toxicologists have, have said that it's possible that just by being around the, the odor of petroleum, for some individuals are sensitive to it and can give them similar symptoms without there being a chemical overexposure.

Betsy Shepherd:
So other public statements and press conferences that are given by officials also frame this by suggesting alternate causes of the illness. Here's a clip of Mary Landry from the Coast Guard. She was also the Federal On-Scene Coordinator for the Unified Command and overseeing the response efforts.

Mary Landry:
As you all know, the, uh, heat and humidity in Louisiana can be challenging. And we did have an incident yesterday where, uh, we had seven people that were hospitalized with various symptoms, headaches, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath.

Betsy Shepherd:
So we have heat and humidity, we have chemical sensitivity. And then the CEO of BP, Tony Hayward, proposes another theory.

Tony Hayward:
I'm sure they were genuinely ill, but whether it was anything to do with dispersants and oil, whether it was food poisoning or some other reason for them being ill, you know, there's a – food poisonings clearly a big issue when you got a, you know, concentration of this number of people on, in temporary camps, temporary accommodation. It's something we have to be very, very mindful of. It's one of the big issues of, of keeping the army operating, you know, armies march on their stomachs.

Betsy Shepherd:
Also in the press conference that the Federal On-Scene Coordinator Mary Landry gave, she said something that was really surprising to me.

Mary Landry:
People are very concerned about the volume of dispersants. The EPA and the Coast Guard actually requested that we reduce it to as much as possible and issued a directive to BP. Uh, we have not had to apply surface dispersants recently. 

Betsy Shepherd:
This surprised me because BP reported that they did in fact spray around 7,200  gallons of Corexit on May 26th, the day of the incident, and they sprayed 1,000 gallons the following day, on the 27th.

Betsy Shepherd:
And I just want to point out that Doug Suttles, the COO of BP, also made a comment on the incident at this May 27th press conference. And he addresses concerns over the dangers of dispersants basically saying, “Well you know what? They've been approved by the EPA, so we're going to use them.” 

Doug Suttles:
You know, the, the Corexit product is one that's on the EPA approved list. And there's been extensive study of that product by, uh, many groups, and the EPA included, so the, the product we're using with, with approval by the Federal On-Scene Coordinator and the EPA and others has been this Corexit product. I think that everyone should recognize we've only done that with approval by the appropriate government parties. We have not, I wanna stress this, we have not ignored in any way the things we've been directed to do.

Betsy Shepherd:
And, you know, people are questioning like, is BP running the show here? Are they calling the shots? What is the government doing to ensure that BP has our best interests at heart? So, at the end of these three days in May, President Obama is making his second visit to south Louisiana to observe cleanup efforts in person.

Betsy Shepherd:
President Obama gave a press conference on May 27th, right in the middle of this three day period. He addressed this specific point about the federal government rubber stamping BP's approach to the spill. 

President Obama:
This notion that somehow the federal government is sitting on the sidelines, and for the last three or four or five weeks, we've just been letting BP make a whole bunch of decisions is simply not true. There may be areas where there have been disagreements, for example, on dispersants, and these are complicated issues, but overall, the decisions that have been made have been reflective of the best science that we've got, the best expert opinion that we have, and have been weighing various risks and various options to allocate our resources in such a way that we can get this fixed as quickly as possible.

[Music] 

Dan:
You know, in this series we're talking about this version of the Deepwater Horizon story that basically cemented in the public consciousness. And I feel like what you've just told me, this story that you've just told me, is Corexit, the potential dangers of dispersants, this medevaced incident, sort of threatening to puncture that bubble. Like it's threatening to become part of the story we all remember. But instead, it's just stomped out like a cigarette. Like, do we know for certain what happened to the medevaced workers? Was, was this ever investigated or no?

Betsy Shepherd:
So, you know, if you remember back from the May 27th press conference, they say, “This incident is being investigated by the Coast Guard, BP, and OSHA.” So, um, this was the last word I heard about it. We are lacking in specific details, and, you know…(dip under) 

There’s a hundred different ways you can tell a story depending on what you choose to focus on.

There's conversations behind every story you hear, deciding what to focus on.

Betsy Shepherd:

…dispersants…

Dan:
Yeah. Um, what, hypothetically if we wanted to try and find out… (dip under) 

When Betsy and I have those conversations, we often have to be pragmatic about telling the stories we want to tell. Like the story of what really happened to these medevaced workers…

Betsy Shepherd:
You know, what I would do is I would submit records requests with these different federal agencies, and…(dip under)

There’s a lot of reasons not to focus on the story of the medevaced workers. There’s no guarantee federal agencies would be cooperative or responsive. And even if they were – records requests would be about a medical incident, so they likely wouldn’t have the names of the workers, if that's how we wanted to try to find the workers themselves. 

There were also a lot of reasons not to focus on this story back in 2010 – remember during all of this, the wellhead was still leaking, oil was still screwing up the Gulf's ecosystem. Those things demanded the media's attention. They were important.

But there’s also a lot of reasons you would focus on this story.

Betsy Shepherd: 

They’re also recalling 125 boats. I mean, they wouldn’t do that unless there was a serious concern that they had about other workers…(dip under)

And for Betsy and I – the reasons you would focus on the medevaced workers – ultimately outweighed the reasons you wouldn’t.  

Betsy Shepherd:
It would be important to follow up and see what happened to the workers that may have been overexposed cause that could be really telling about the effects of Corexit.

Dan:
Yeah, I agree. I agree a hundred percent. Um…then, then yeah, I think, I think this is a, this is a, a big part of our investigation then. I think, I think we try to get to the bottom of this. I think, I think it's important enough that, that it's worth the, uh, the possibility that everyone gets mad at us for coming up empty-handed, [laughs] but I think, I think it's worth the risk, yeah.

So, we'll do it.

[Music]

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