The morning after President Obama’s State of the Union speech that featured plans for reinvigorating U.S. manufacturing, Marketplace Morning Report asked former Obama Administration economic advisor Jared Bernstein why a company like Apple doesn’t create more jobs in the U.S. “Well,” replied Bernstein, “because the infrastructure for consumer electronics – particularly the assembly for consumer electronics – for many decades has been building up in Asia. And they just have a robust, flexible supply chain there that we simply don’t have when it comes to consumer electronics.”

Thanks to the release of Apple’s 2012 Supplier Responsibility report, we now know the names of 156 companies that account for more thank 97 percent of what Apple pays to its suppliers. But this report only scratches the surface when it comes to what makes this consumer electronics infrastructure and supply chain so “flexible” and “robust” from the perspective of a company like Apple.

What the report does tell us is that this supply chain involves an enormous workforce putting in long hours. At nearly half the audited suppliers, Apple reported that a majority of their workers have been working weekly hours that exceed 60 hours per week at least one week out of 12 – and working more than 6 consecutive days at least once a month. It also tells us that about half of the suppliers audited did not pay proper overtime “as required by laws and regulations,” while about a third failed to provide legally required benefits and a third deducted wages as a disciplinary measure.

The report also tells us that half the facilities audited had inadequate safety exit procedures, including narrow corridors and poorly marked or inaccurate evacuation routes. Close to half also had noncompliance in some aspect of fire prevention, preparedness and response, including unmarked fire extinguishers and insufficient fire drills. About a third lacked first-aid supply procedures or had inadequate procedures to ensure compliance with first-aid measures. In 2011, there were explosions at Apple supplier facilities in Chengdu (Foxconn) and in Shanghai (Ri-Teng/Pegatron). Four people were killed and 18 injured in Chengdu and 59 injured in Shanghai.

While the report provides some important information about working conditions in the facilities making Apple products, there are many other factors that affect the health of the workers who assemble computers, smart-phones and other consumer electronics.

Applying a code of conduct to a complex supply chain Apple has just announced that it will be implementing the Fair Labor Association’s code of conduct. One of the code’s provisions ties compensation standards to local minimum and prevailing wage standards.

While lower wages are sometimes assumed to be appropriate given the lower cost of living in Asia, low wages have prompted numerous protests and strikes over the past year in China and elsewhere in Asia, including protests involving thousands of workers in Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Chengdu where Apple suppliers are located. In January 2012, the minimum wage in Shenzhen, where Apple supplier Foxconn (among other such manufacturers) has facilities, was raised to 1500 yuan/month ($236) from 1320 yuan/month ($208). In Chengdu, in Sichuan province, where the explosion and fire caused by combustible dust occurred in May 2011, wages have been raised to rates that range from 800 ($126) to 1050 ($166) yuan/month. Malaysia and Singapore have no nationally established minimum wage.

Apple’s 2012 Supplier Responsibility report mentions only China, Malaysia, and Singapore as supplier locations, but a search through the suppliers’ lists of global manufacturing facilities shows that Apple suppliers may also be located in India, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Slovakia, Thailand, the Philippines, among many other countries. The number of possible countries where suppliers may be located means many different sets of wage standards and many different standards and practices regarding labor unions and other worker organizations and how worker organizing is regarded. It also means many different expectations and practices regarding how and where workers live – whether they’re expected to live in company dormitories or not and what that means for wages, benefits, and other working conditions.

Tracking compliance with a code of conduct is also complicated because many of the 156 companies listed on the Apple supplier list have suppliers of their own. Of the 229 facilities Apple audited for the 2012 report, 112 (or nearly half) lacked adequate procedure for auditing their supplier and do not perform adequate supplier audits. Only 55% of the audited facilities had adequate corrective action systems in place and only 56% had what Apple calls management accountability and responsibility either in place or in compliance with existing standards.

Industry-wide problems Apple has made news with its supplier disclosure and adoption of the Fair Labor Association code of conduct, but the labor problems highlighted by its supplier responsibility report are not unique to Apple. These issues, particularly when it comes to overtime and wages, are chronic in Chinese and other Asian electronics manufacturing plants that work as suppliers to other major electronics firms, including Dell, HP, and IBM. Not detailed by Apple, but called out by the China Labor Watch in its July 2011 report on electronics work in China, is the lack of proper employment agreements that resulted in workers not being fully informed about their rights, benefits or training – a problem I have heard about first-hand from electronics workers in the Philippines.

When it comes to chemical exposure, Apple has documented the use of n-hexane, ID, in its supplier Wintek’s facility in Suzhou where the chemical sickened 137 workers in 2010. In its 2011 Supplier Responsibility report Apple also reported that another unnamed supplier and its subcontractor had been using n-hexane. But no other details of chemical exposure are provided in either the 2011 or 2012 reports. Yet among the suppliers listed by Apple, in addition to those at Wintek facilities, among the other companies where chemical exposure and related worker safety issues have been documented are Foxconn, Samsung, Catcher Technology Co., and Quanta. And there are longstanding and/or historical chemical exposure issues involving US electronics manufacturing facilities in the U.S., among them Fairchild Semiconductor, IBM, and Intel that have effected both individual and communities. In addition, I have heard anecdotally first-hand about chemical exposure issues in electronics manufacturing facilities in Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea, and the Philippines.

It’s also worth noting, that Foxconn, whose facilities in China have been highlighted in recent reporting by the New York Times, in addition to producing for Apple, has also been acting as a supplier for other companies, among them Amazon, Dell, HP, Lenovo Microsoft, Nokia Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony. By now it’s painfully clear that the “robust” Asian electronics infrastructure to which analysts like Jared Bernstein refer depends on the region’s enormous, low-wage, risky-condition workforce.

What will it take to change this, I asked Ted Smith of the International Campaign for Responsible Technology. “These situations will continue until there is an informed and empowered workforce and workforce organizations of a serious kind to watch over what’s going on,” said Smith. “As long as there’s no counterforce, this is what will continue to happen.”

Elizabeth Grossman is the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, and other books. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Scientific American, Salon, The Washington Post, The Nation, Mother Jones, Grist, and the Huffington Post. Chasing Molecules was chosen by Booklist as one of the Top 10 Science & Technology Books of 2009 and won a 2010 Gold Nautilus Award for investigative journalism.

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Bananas in Ecuador, Nicaragua, Belize, and the Philippines; broccoli in Guatemala; carpets in India, Nepal, and Pakistan; cocoa in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Cameroon; coffee in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, and Panama; cotton in Egypt, Brazil, China, Uzbekistan, and Turkey; electronics and toys in China, clothing in China, India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Argentina; rice in Brazil, India, and the Philippines; melons, onions, and tomatoes in Mexico What these products – along with diamonds, gold, sugarcane, shoes, rare earth and strategic metals – have in common is that they’re among the 130 different products made by child and forced labor in 71 countries listed in reports released earlier this month by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB).

Two of these reports are required by Acts of Congress, The Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor and the List of Goods Produced by Child or Forced Labor; an Executive Order mandates the other, The List of Products Produced by Forced or Indentured Child Labor. All describe the incidence of child and forced labor and what’s being done to address these issues, including making education accessible and affordable. What these reports do not do is trace these goods to market. But by showing how widespread this labor is and that it involves so many high-volume exports, they raise the distinct possibility that everyday consumer purchases could include the products of child and forced labor.

The products list, said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis on the release of these reports, is “a tool to generate action. It is meant to help foreign governments, industry groups, companies, unions, workers and consumers make informed decisions about the goods they produce and consume.”

The countries where this work is taking place literally ring the globe. In addition to those listed above, the others include Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Angola, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Honduras, Jordan, Russia, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan. In addition to the long list of goods produced by child and forced labor, these reports – released annually for the past ten years – also document instances of child soldiering and prostitution, and of children engaged in enforced or entrapped domestic work.

Work done by child laborers According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), approximately 215 million children work as child laborers around the world. By rough calculation, this is slightly less than 10 percent of the world’s children under age 15. About 115 million – or 54 percent – of these child workers from age 5 to 17 engage in various forms of hazardous labor, says the ILO. This includes work underground, under water, in high or confined spaces, with dangerous machinery, carrying heavy loads, or with toxic substances. The number of people “trapped in forced labor worldwide,” the ILO estimates to be 12.5 million. But the ILO also notes that for many countries, data on child labor is either out-of-date, unreliable, or for some countries, is altogether unavailable, so there may be additional countries where child and forced labor not counted here is also taking place.

Agricultural crops account for the largest category of good manufactured by child and forced labor, followed by manufactured products, and then products mined and quarried. Of the agricultural crops, cotton, sugarcane, tobacco, coffee, and cattle top the list. In its surveys of child labor, the ILO includes children’s work on farms owned or operated by their parents and does not distinguish between different sizes or types of farms when assessing child labor. This is in contrast to U.S. labor regulations that allow “youths of any age” to “work at any time in any job on a farm owned or operated by their parents.”

A number of the listed agricultural products come from countries that are among the world’s top exporters, including to the United States. For example, according to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, Ecuador, Belize, and the Philippines are among the world’s largest exporters of bananas; all are listed by the ILAB reports as producing bananas with child labor. Colombia and Guatemala are leading exporters of coffee to the U.S. The Ivory Coast and Ghana supply much of the U.S.’ cocoa imports; all of these countries are also listed by the ILAB child labor reports. (Cocoa producers in Ghana and the Ivory Coast are currently engaged with a program known as the Harkin-Engel Protocol that aims to reduce “the worst forms of child labor” by 70 percent in cocoa production in those countries by 2020.) Egypt and Uzbekistan, also listed by the ILAB reports, are among the world’s top cotton exporters.

The US response to child labor While they’re intended to spur action, these reports do not trigger any enforcement of regulations. But, as the Department of Labor explained in an email, once an item appears on the list of goods produced with child or enforced labor, any U.S. government procurement officer in any U.S. government agency or government branch buying any of the listed products must make sure that the “vendor selling the item has made a good faith effort to ensure that the goods being sold are not made by forced or indentured child labor.” Additionally, “Under the procurement regulations implementing the Executive Order, federal contractors who supply products on a list published by the Department of Labor must certify that they have made a good faith effort to determine whether forced or indentured child labor was used to produce the items listed.” In addition to electronics and toys from China, shrimp from Thailand, diamonds from Sierra Leone, and stones from India, the current list includes pornography from Russia.

Importing goods made by “forced labor, including forced labor of children,” is also prohibited, explained the Department of Labor. In addition child labor standards are incorporated into all U.S. free trade agreements since the 1994 North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation, a side agreement to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). But given the large number of high volume production items on the ILAB report lists, enforcement and implementation of standards clearly remains a challenge.

One country not included in the ILAB reports is the United States. The Department of Labor (DOL) explains this by saying it is beyond the mandate of the program under which these reports are compiled. But DOL also says it “recognizes that both child and forced labor occur in the U.S.,” that the department is “committed to ensuring that U.S. labor laws are strictly enforced,” and that since 2009 it has added 350 new field investigators to increase enforcement. In 2010 the Department of Labor increased penalties for business violating child labor standards, and is currently taking public comment on its proposal to increase protections for young people working on U.S. farms, rules that have not been updated since they were established in 1970.

When it comes to manufactured products, bricks, garments, carpets, and footwear lead the list of goods made by children and those in forced labor. Gold, diamonds, and coal, are the mined products most widely produced by child and forced labor.

However, for no category of goods – neither agricultural, mineral, nor manufactured products – do the reports name individual companies or businesses. The Department of Labor explains this by saying, “It would be difficult for ILAB to attempt to track the identity of every company and industry using a good produced with child labor or forced labor. In addition, it is the Department’s experience that child labor and forced labor frequently occur in small local enterprises, for which company names, if they are available, have little relevance.” The names of these companies may be obscure, but in this age of global supply chains, they may be far from irrelevant as companies reach around the world for labor, raw materials, and locally out-of-season produce.

Elizabeth Grossman is the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, and other books. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Scientific American, Salon, The Washington Post, The Nation, Mother Jones, Grist, and the Huffington Post. Chasing Molecules was chosen by Booklist as one of the Top 10 Science & Technology Books of 2009 and won a 2010 Gold Nautilus Award for investigative journalism.

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A dangerous flame retardant known as “Tris” has reappeared in products designed for babies and young children, among them car seats, changing table pads, portable crib mattresses, high chair seats, and nursing pillows. (Tris, once used in children’s sleepwear, was removed from these products in the 1970s, after it was identified as a carcinogen and a mutagen, a compound that causes genetic mutation.) Also found in these products, according to the same recent study, which appeared in Environmental Science & Technology, is another flame retardant, pentaBDE. This compound was banned in Europe in 2004, when its U.S. manufacturers voluntarily discontinued it after it was found to be environmentally persistent, bioaccumulative, and to adversely affect thyroid function and neurological development.

The study also identified new compounds whose ingredients include some of the older toxic substances—and it found all of these and other flame retardants in 80 percent of the 101 infant and children’s products tested. That these chemicals, associated with adverse health impacts including cancer and endocrine disruption, are so widespread raises serious questions about the U.S. system of chemicals management and how we evaluate product safety.

With the potential health hazards of widely used synthetic chemicals coming under increasing scrutiny, and with a growing call from medical and scientific professionals for policies that protect children from such hazards, the question of what takes the place of a threatening chemical has become increasingly important. It also prompts questions about whether it is better to substitute another chemical for the one posing problems or to redesign a product so it can achieve its desired performance, perhaps without such chemicals.

Together these flame retardants and plasticizers raise profound questions about how we think about designing new materials and the wisdom of regulating chemicals one at a time.

The brominated and chlorinated flame retardants (BFRs and CFRs) found in these children’s products offer one cautionary example. Another group of chemicals known as phthalates, used to increase the flexibility of one of the world’s most widely used plastics, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), offers another. Together, these compounds account for the vast majority of all plastics additives used worldwide.

In the case of the flame retardants used in upholstery foams, carpet backings, textiles, and hard plastic appliances and other products since the 1970s, new compounds introduced to replace the hazardous ones have in fact resembled their predecessors. The result, despite “early warnings and periodic reminders about the problematic properties of these chemicals” is a “continuing pattern of unfortunate substitution,” wrote Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program, and Ake Bergman, professor of environmental chemistry at Stockholm University, inEnvironmental Health Perspectives in October. They were introducing a statement of concern about BFRs and CFRs signed by nearly 150 scientists from 22 countries.

While cushions and electronics can function without flame retardants, PVC cannot work without plasticizers. Phthalates—oily, colorless liquids based on benzene chemistry—have been the plasticizers of choice since PVC was commercialized in the early 20th century. Without phthalates, PVC would be brittle and of limited use. In some bendable PVC products, phthalates can make up as much as 40 to 50 percent of the finished plastic—and in 2008, nearly 540 billion pounds of PVC were produced worldwide.

Phthalates are also used in other vinyl-based products, to create thin and flexible films (they’ve been used in nail polish and other cosmetics), as lubricants (hence their use in lotions), as solvents, and to extend the life of fragrances, among many other applications. They are found in everything from food packaging to insect repellant to bath and teething toys. Some phthalates have been shown in animal studies to cause birth defects, and a number of popular phthalates have been identified as endocrine disrupters that interfere with male reproductive development. Concerned, Europe restricted use of about half a dozen phthalates in 2008, and the U.S. restricted them in products intended for use by children under age 12. Similar regulations exist elsewhere, including Canada, Japan, and Taiwan. On May 4, the French National assembly voted to ban phthalates altogether, based on concerns about endocrine disruption.

Like the BFR and CFR flame retardants, phthalates are released from the materials to which they’re added. That phthalates could migrate from PVC has been known since the 1960s, when the Air Force found that this could cause problems on spacecraft and phthalates were detected leeching from plastic tubing used in blood transfusion and dairy equipment. We can take phthalates into our bodies by breathing them, ingesting them, and by absorbing them through our skin. A study published in March of this year found that when people eliminated certain packaged foods from their diets, levels of the corresponding phthalates in their urine dropped by more than 50 percent.

So with growing concerns about phthalates and increasing restrictions on their use, a search is on for alternatives—ideally non-toxic compounds that will not migrate out of the plastics. But PVC itself, even without the phthalates, raises questions about product safety. While it may be possible to find a non-toxic plasticizer, vinyl chloride, the main ingredient of PVC, is a human carcinogen that also causes liver and nerve damage. PVC also poses hazards when burned, as incomplete combustion can result in dioxins, also carcinogenic compounds. In April, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed increasing emissions standards for plants that produce PVC, citing inhalation risks to people who live in communities where these manufacturing facilities are located. There are currently 17 such plants in the U.S., mostly in Louisiana and Texas.

Together these flame retardants and plasticizers raise profound questions about how we think about designing new materials and the wisdom—from an environmental health perspective—of regulating chemicals one at a time rather than by examining their characteristics and behavior. They also point to the need to look at a product’s entire lifecycle when considering its health impacts. There are many arguments to be made about the costs and benefits of using these materials, and moving away from such widely and long-used materials presents many challenges. Yet as Paul Anastas and John Warner, often considered to be the founders of green chemistry, point out, there is no reason a molecule must be hazardous to perform a particular task. To solve the kinds of problems posed by materials like PVC, “we need to design into our technologies the consequences to human health and the environment.”

Cross posted at The Atlantic

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In an incident that brings to mind the Triangle factory fire that took place in New York almost 100 years ago, the fire that broke out on December 14th on the 9th and 10th floors of the building housing the Ha-meem Group’s “That’s It Sportswear” factory in the Ashalia industrial district outside Dhaka, Bangladesh killed at least two dozen workers, and injured scores more. Electrical short-circuiting is a primary cause being investigated for the fire that occurred Tuesday while a reported 200 to 300 of the factory’s approximately 5,000 or more workers were on lunch break in the factory canteen. According to one report, the fire was not fully extinguished until midday Wednesday.

The Ha-meem Group is one of Bangladesh’s largest garment manufacturers. This particular factory produces clothing for a variety of European and U.S. companies; the International Labor Rights Forum has compiled a list of its customers, which includes the Gap, JC Penney, OshKosh, Phillips Van Heusen (company brands include Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Izod, Kenneth Cole, DKNY, and Timberland), Abercrombie, and the VF Corporation (company brands include Wrangler, Lee, The North Face, and Lucy). It is not yet clear exactly what merchandise was being produced here.

One account of the fire describes thick smoke that obscured exits and crowds of workers rushing to indoor stairs. Other accounts describe workers who leapt to injury or death from windows. Problems using fire extinguishers because of lack of water and lack of worker training in how to use them were also reported.

According to the Bangladesh Daily Star, “Witnesses said four out of seven exit staircases were closed. Desperate to flee the heat and smoke, some workers jumped off the windows, while some fell trying to get to the ground using rolls of cloth. Many others were injured hurtling down the stairs.” The Associated Press also reports a locked stairwell gate that trapped people inside the factory. One survivor reported emergency exits and “exits for women” closed.

Substandard wiring or sabotage? Electrical wiring in Bangladeshi factories is often substandard and fires are not uncommon, Maquiladora Health and Safety Support Network coordinator Garrett Brown told me in a phone call yesterday. In February of this year, fire at another Bangladesh garment factory killed 22 people and injured dozens more. The Clean Clothes Campaign website has links to articles about numerous deadly garment factory accidents in the past ten years.

But the on-line news service BDnews24.com reports that “Delwar Hossain, deputy managing director of Ha-Mim [sic] Group, on Wednesday told reporters that the fire had not originated from any electric short-circuit. “Someone deliberately did it.” A Ha-meem factory was set on fire during labor protests here in June 2009.

Wages in Bangladesh are some of the lowest in the world. Many garment workers earn less than $1/day and live well below the local poverty line. This year has been one of labor unrest turned violent.

This past weekend, thousands of garment workers blocked streets and factories around Dhaka in protests over companies’ failure to implement a new minimum wage that would raise monthly pay to at least $43. Three people were reported killed and scores injured in the demonstrations. In July after three weeks of violent protest the Bangladesh government agreed to nearly double the monthly wage for workers in the export garment industry, an increase that was to take effect in November 2010. Garments are Bangladesh’s largest export and the country’s second largest employment sector; these exports have nearly doubled in the past five years.

The limits of Corporate Social Responsibility policies Companies like the Gap that contract with Ha-meem have extensive corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies, but what many American consumers don’t know is that the U.S. companies do not control actual workplace safety. That falls to the local company that pays the workers. Both Trina Tocco, deputy director of the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), and Garrett Brown described Bangladesh factory inspections as completely inadequate.

While U.S. company CSR policies embrace transparency and many list the countries where manufacturing takes place, names of these companies are not easy obtain. For example, while the Ha-meem Group lists U.S. buyers on its Facebook page (the company website is currently inaccessible), none of the U.S. companies list Ha-meem as a supplier. Yesterday I contacted several of the companies listed on Ha-meen Group’s Facebook page – Gap, JC Penney, Kohl’s, Target, and Wal-Mart – and only two responded by close-of-business. JC Penney said they sourced from this factory; Wal-Mart said they did not. ILRF, the Worker Rights Consortium, and other news sources confirmed the other U.S. buyers.

“Buyers are in Bangladesh because it’s crazy cheap,” said Trina Tocco. “Any buyer that thinks otherwise is fooling themselves and consumers. This is completely unacceptable” said Tocco of yesterday’s fire. “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

Cross Posted at The Pump Handle

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Is it Safe to Eat Seafood from the Gulf?

“After three long months of oil geysering continuously from the depths of the Gulf, a temporary cap has stemmed the flow and it appears that the well is on its way to being killed. But we are by no means through this disaster,” said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in his opening remarks at the August 4th Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the use of oil dispersants in the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Gulf Coast fishermen and others whose livelihoods depend on the Gulf of Mexico’s sea life know this all too well.

While the scientists testifying in Washington, DC last week agreed that the long-term ecological impacts of the dispersants deployed in the Gulf are largely unknown – “a grand experiment with great unknowns,” said Sen. Whitehouse to sum up the testimony – the Gulf Coast seafood community is grappling with the more immediate issue of the safety of the fish and shellfish that they need to sell. Since the July 15 capping of the ruptured well, Gulf waters have been steadily opened to fishing. But fishing community responses to the openings – and to assurances of seafood safety from state and federal agencies – vary widely, reflecting the underlying uncertainty about what this disaster means for the region’s future.

What Fishermen Worry About “Fishermen think shrimp season is being opened too soon and don’t want to sell their catch because they’re unsure of the safety. They don’t want to make people sick,” said Leo Esclamado, coordinator of the Mississippi Coalition of Vietnamese American Fisherfolk and Families. “People are still seeing oil,” he told me. And last week, he said, some of the shrimpers in his community were seeing “shrimp already dead in the water.” Such occurrences make it harder to accept official assurances of safety. “If they can’t vouch for the safety, they don’t want to sell it,” said Esclamado of the fishermen he works with.

Some fishermen have voiced concern that closure violations could get contaminated seafood into the market. According to NOAA, the Coast Guard has increased Coast Guard patrols and as of August 12, this is no longer a problem.

At the other end of the confidence spectrum is Mike Voisin, owner of Motivatit Seafood in Houma, Louisiana, whose specialty is oysters. “The science behind the openings indicates the openings should occur. Should we be concerned? Yes, but the [testing] protocols are very, very conservative,” said Voisin, who was among those who brought Gulf seafood to the Whitehouse to celebrate the New Orleans Saints and President Obama’s birthday. “This is one of the most tested and analyzed fisheries. I know Gulf seafood is safer than it ever was,” said Voisin, who is also a member of the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission.

Esclamado’s comments echo those voiced by other Gulf Coast fisherman, some of whom gathered last week in Biloxi at a meeting organized by the Gulf Coast Fund.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Esclamado. Not only are fishermen – and seafood processors – concerned about seafood safety, but as the surface oil diminishes, the need for the skimming and boom work fishermen have been doing through the Vessels of Opportunity program has been declining. “The majority of folks who started in that program have been deactivated,” Esclamado told me. “It’s a jobs issue.”

He also said there was concern that money was now going to be spent on seafood marketing rather than on clean-up.

Esclamado’s concerns coincide with those of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LABB). “Seafood is declared safe to eat, but every fisher we have talked to says they would not feed this fish to their children,” said LABB program manager Anna Hrybyk via email. “BP is pulling out and the feds have started to talk restoration when there is still oil and water in the marshes. There is,” she said, a “hastiness to get back to normal.”

But knowing what is “normal” when it comes to seafood safety and overall environmental health along the Gulf Coast is one of the open – and disturbing – questions.

Federal Agencies Offer Reassurance The current seafood tests focus primarily on oil and related hydrocarbon compounds, no matter what their source – whether oil or from dispersants. As Don Kraemer, acting deputy director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition explained, there is currently sensory – i.e., smell – testing for dispersants, and chemical analysis tests for these components are now being developed. But, he said, dispersants degrade quickly and are not expected to persist or accumulate in fish flesh. Plus, they’ve been greatly diluted.

The question of what’s “normal” arises when considering dispersants. Kraemer told me that, “All the constituents of these dispersants are also approved for use in existing consumer products,” – he named toothpaste, stool softener, and other over-the-counter medications – so the risk for adverse impacts are low. “That doesn’t mean we want to add to the burden, but fish are subjected to them regularly,” said Kraemer. But, he also added, “We don’t know what the background levels are.”

In an attempt to address some of these concerns, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is now actively engaged in outreach to and engagement with the Gulf Coast fishing community – through conference calls, and on site with dock and port agents. “We’re having a blitz to get into these communities,” said Laurel Bryant, NOAA External Affairs Fisheries Coordinator.

On one such call, on August 12th, NOAA fisheries experts fielded many of the same questions raised by the Vietnamese American fishing community Esclamado works with, by fishermen at their meeting in Biloxi, and by policymakers. All are seeking more certainty about safety given the unprecedented release of contaminants into the Gulf.

“Over thousands of samples, not one has failed,” said Walt Dickhoff, supervisory physiology with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center on the August 12th call. “Today above anytime in history,” Mike Voisin told me, “we should have confidence in Gulf seafood. And we will make sure testing continues.”

Cross posted at The Pump Handle

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Even if not one more drop of oil flows into the Gulf of Mexico from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well, given that nearly 200 million barrels of oil have entered those waters – the AP “spill meter” estimate based on the 35-60,000 barrels a day – chased by nearly 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants, seafood safety will remain a question for some time to come.

Based on the presence of oil in specific areas of the Gulf – and in fish and shellfish – federal and state agencies are determining which areas should be closed to fishing and overseeing the safety of seafood destined for markets. Consumers’ confidence in the agencies doing these jobs will influence their willingness to purchase Gulf seafood – and may even affect how consumers feel about seafood from other places. Closing Areas to Fishing Nearly 84,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico have been closed to fishing since July 13th. But on Thursday afternoon, July 22, NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) – NOAA’s jurisdiction begins 3 miles off shore and they’ve been working in tandem with the states that oversee near-shore waters – re-opened 26,388 square miles of this area, along what’s called the Florida shelf, which, at its closest, is 190 miles from the well site. “There been no oil in this area for over a month,” explained NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco during a call with reporters.

“Today’s decision is good news for Gulf fishermen and American consumers,” said Commerce Secretary Gary Locke in a statement, and “provides important assurance to the American people that the seafood they buy is safe and protects the Gulf seafood brand and the many people who depend on it for their livelihoods.”

On the 22nd the state of Alabama also announced that limited areas of Mobile Bay will be open to shrimping beginning 6 a.m. on July 23rd. “We collected shrimp in June and sent them off for analysis. No (oil compounds) were found,” state biologist John Mareska told the Mobile Press-Register.

NOAA cautions, “Modeling and mapping the actual and projected spill area is not an exact science. NOAA Fisheries Service strongly advises fishermen not to fish in areas where oil or oil sheens (very thin layers of floating oil) are present, even if those areas are not currently closed to fishing.”

According to NOAA, the federal agency responsible for fishing regulations, the most important first step in ensuring seafood safety where there’s been an oil spill is to close the area to fishing. During a July 22 press call, Dr. Lubchenco explained that oil was tracked visually, including on overflights, as well as with subsea and water sampling testing by NOAA research ships. After that comes testing the seafood itself by NOAA along with the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).

Sniffing Seafood “Crude oil has the potential to taint seafood with flavors and odors imparted by exposure to hydrocarbon chemicals. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates the presence of hydrocarbons as a possible adulterant in seafood,” explains a NOAA factsheet on oil spill seafood safety. The first line of testing defense against oil-contaminated seafood is what’s technically called “sensory analysis,” explains Steven Wilson, Chief Quality Officer of NOAA’s Seafood Inspection Program – in layperson’s terms: sniffing. “The concept is simple,” Wilson tells me in an interview. “The brain is good a differentiating odors and flavors, at differentiating what’s acceptable and not acceptable.” According to NOAA, sensory testing experts can detect aromatics associated with oil down to parts per million.

NOAA’s battalion of expert sniffers are trained to fine-tune their senses to detect aromatic compounds – the hazardous chemicals that are the hallmarks of oil contamination, Wilson tells me. These tests have repeatability and confidence criteria, he explains. And they are backed up by chemical testing. But since it’s not possible to test every piece of seafood, the sampling is representative, with the affected geographic area divided into sampling stations. There are currently 30 such stations in the Gulf, says Wilson. “Seventy percent of the testers must pass samples from a single station as clean, and if any one sample fails, that station fails,” he explains.

The situation in the Gulf is challenging in terms of determining where seafood won’t encounter oil since so much oil has entered the water column and is now so widely dispersed. “It’s very difficult to deal with while the oil can come back [to any one place],” says Wilson. The area of the Gulf just reopened to fishing will stay under ongoing surveillance for oil and dockside seafood testing for the next 30 days.

“Much of this area was not oiled,” said Dr. Lubchenco of the Gulf area re-opened to fishing. “I feel confident that this seafood is very safe to eat,” she said.

Despite this rigor, what seems to remain somewhat unclear is how specifically NOAA and the FDA are testing for the presence of dispersant chemicals in seafood. Wilson told me they were not when we spoke earlier in July. This also came up under questioning of EPA and NOAA witnesses at the July 15th Senate Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing on the use of chemical oil dispersants in the Deepwater Horizon response.

“Is FDA testing for dispersants [in seafood]?” asked Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). “Our seafood tests are for oil. They’re not specifically looking for dispersants or by products of dispersants,” explained Dr. Larry Robinson, NOAA assistant secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson explained that because the dispersants being used are made up primarily of petroleum products, screening for oil in seafood would also catch these hydrocarbons. Further, she explained, bioaccumulation studies and models conducted thus far indicate that the other chemical constituents of these dispersants don’t stick around.” EPA, while not a regulator of seafood, is the agency responsible for approving chemicals used in oil spill mitigation. Impacts on marine life is an essential part of that process.

But, acknowledged Larry Robinson under further questioning, “This is something on our list of things we’d like to know more about.”

Even if the non-hydrocarbon chemical components of dispersants don’t bioaccumulate, that doesn’t mean they won’t be present, notes Jackie Savitz, senior campaign director for the NGO Oceana’s pollution campaigns. “I think we should be taking a more precautionary approach,” she says.

Consumer Perceptions Under these circumstances, asked Murkowski, “How do we give the consumer assurance?”

“To people in the Midwest of this country, seafood is seafood and if they don’t know where it comes from people err on the side of not eating it,” said Murkowski, noting that questions about Gulf seafood has an impact on seafood as far away as Alaska. “Without that confidence, it’s going to be hard to bring back that market,” she pointed out. Her words reminded me of the empty New Orleans area seafood market.

Concerns about consumer perceptions also arose during the July 22nd NOAA press call. “We have talked to several fishermen today in our area. We thought they would be excited about areas reopening, but they were actually more concerned saying this decision was made to soon and wondering who would be held responsible if seafood caught from these waters being reopened does make someone sick? If that does happen, who will be held responsible?,” asked Steven Norris, reporter with WPMI, a Mobile, (AL) TV station.

“The testing is very rigorous testing, and we are able to detect very, very small amounts of potential contaminants in seafood, and every single one of the samples that was tested from this region is clean. And so, for this particular area, we feel very confident that the seafood is completely safe to eat,” replied NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco. “I would feel completely comfortable eating any seafood from this area that we are opening today,” she said.

Despite these assurances, questions remain – particularly about contaminants we can’t see, smell or taste – especially as storms blow in pushing oiled and dispersant-laden water with increased vigor. “Are you at all wary of eating seafood from the Gulf after the oil disaster? – Vote Now,” asks a July 23rd poll on the website for Local-15TV, the Mobile-Pensacola area NBC affiliate.

Cross posted at The Pump Handle

Photo by FreeCat

The post After the Oil Spill: Is Your Seafood Safe appeared first on The Faster Times.

“One might say, ‘Well, what’s Commerce-Justice doing with public health?’” Mikulski asked rhetorically. “Well, we think [about] water quality, the impact on marine life and seafood and what these dispersants mean to people who are working on the clean-up and who have to live in the Gulf the rest of their lives. We don’t want a Gulf War syndrome,” she said. “I’m really hot about this, and that’s why I said to our colleagues in the executive branch, ‘Urgency!’ Let’s go to the edge of our chair. We need to know more.”

What we don’t know has, in many ways, become a leitmotif of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP the and federal agencies that make up the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command have responded to public concerns by posting copious amounts of information online, including large amounts of sampling data. Nonetheless, information gaps persist – and their continued presence demonstrates the limits of our current system for protecting environmental, public, and workers’ health.

Controlled Burns and Particulate Matter One of the obvious omissions is information regarding particulate matter (PM) in the air in the vicinity of the Deepwater Horizon rig site, where controlled burns have been conducted since late April. This is of concern because as of July 18th, according Administration-Wide Response summary from the Deepwater Horizon Joint Information Center, 409 controlled burns have been conducted to date, removing more than 11 million gallons of oil from the water. Controlled burn numbers to date from four consecutive days last week give a sense of the frequency of these burns:

This works out to an average of 15 a day, with a high of 29 burns conducted between July 14 and 15.

Particulate matter is a respiratory irritant that can also affect cardiovascular health, and it is regulated by the EPA. Health effects can include aggravated asthma, chronic bronchitis, irregular heart beat, and non-fatal heart attacks. Both “inhalable coarse particles” of between 2.5 and 10 micrometers (regulated as PM 10) and “fine particles” of 2.5 micrometers or smaller (regulated as PM 2.5) have potential adverse health impacts. Fine particles pose additional concerns as they can become lodged in lung tissue where they can deposit toxic chemicals they may be carrying – polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) for example.

The EPA and Gulf Coast states regularly monitor for PM, and the EPA has a “BP spill” website where it’s been posting its ongoing monitoring of PM along the coast. Yet while there are numerous workers on vessels and platforms in the vicinity of the controlled burns, neither BP, EPA, NIOSH, NOAA nor OSHA has released publicly available data that includes airborne particulate matter for air in the vicinity of the Deepwater Horizon rig site.

This is despite a NOAA paper on in situ burns posted on its oil spill response page that recommends: “Environmental sampling for PM-10 should be conducted in the immediate vicinity of the population that may be affected. We understand, however that the decision to sample and how to sample may depend on the resources available for conducting the sampling and local guidelines.” http://app.restorethegulf.gov/go/doc/2931/786995/ [administration wide response]

Another NOAA paper on in situ burns notes that “the burning of oil on water seems to be similar to burning the oil in a furnace or a car, with the exception that the burn is oxygen-starved and not very efficient, so that it generates ample amount of black soot particulates that absorb sunlight and create the black smoke.” It also notes that about 5 to 15% of the oil is converted to particulates during a burn and that 1-3% is comprised of NO2, SO2, CO, PAHs, “ketones, aldehydes, and other combustion by-products.”

The EPA Gulf Coast onshore air quality monitoring of PM has shown occasional elevated levels, but PM data is largely provided as daily averages and reflects PM from numerous sources, not just those directly related to the Deepwater Horizon incident and response. The EPA has also conducted sampling overflights through its ASPECT program, but these flights are too high to reflect the near-surface air quality that would affect people working on boats and platforms near the rig site, and they have not included particulate sampling. In June, NOAA conducted two low-altitude air monitoring flights and has posted raw data, but according to NOAA spokesperson Linda Joy, it may be months before interpretation of that data is available.

Scope of OSHA’s Work OSHA has been an active presence in the Gulf, but it is limited by the number and quality of existing permissible exposure limits (PELs) and by its existing resources – which are intended to ensure workplace safety nationwide, not only in the Gulf.

In an interview, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, Jordan Barab explained that while there are OSHA exposure standards for dust (heavy metals, asbestos, beryllium, and silica dust all pose such hazards) and some occupational standards for diesel particulates, there are no occupational exposure limits for PM comparable to what the EPA has set for ambient air.

The recently released National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) evaluation of in situ burn work made recommendations about protecting workers from carbon monoxide but did not address particulates.

Existing sampling efforts may be providing insufficient coverage for workers on certain types of vessels, including some closest to the rig site. Vessels involved in work near the rig site – some that are out for 2 to 3 weeks at a time – include privately owned boats engaged by contractors and subcontractors that are working outside of the Vessels of Opportunity (VOOs) program. These boats seem to fall under a different category of oversight than the VOOs and thus far don’t appear to have been included in federal government monitoring. When I asked the Coast Guard for a count of such vessels I was told, “Boats like that definitely exist but we don’t have a number for you.”

“We’ve been out with people doing in situ burns… and have gone out many times beyond three miles but we are not out at the source monitoring as that’s an enormous use of resources,” Barab told me. (OSHA’s legal jurisdiction for citations extends 3 miles offshore, but it can monitor beyond that limit.) OSHA’s sampling is “representative,” he explained, and thus far, “We haven’t seen much, if any, chemical exposures at all.”

“To date, no air sampling by OSHA has detected any hazardous chemical at levels of concern,” the agency’s website reports. “What frustrates me is that I’m spending so much time explaining that we’re seeing such low levels of exposures and I’m wishing that we were taking the same kind of care to make sure that the rest of the workers in the country were not getting exposed to god-knows-what. I wish that everyone was getting the same kind of attention so that we could enforce our totally inadequate PELs [personal exposure limits],” Barab told me.

Health Effects Barab explains that, in addition to seeing no hazardous levels of exposure in air sampling data, OSHA is not seeing illness reports that would suggest hazardous chemical exposure levels. “To the extent we’ve been able to look into all cases and that NIOSH has, the majority or plurality have been heat related. That’s been the diagnosis and they’ve been treated by rehydrating people.”

NIOSH has been conducting Health Hazard Evaluations (HHE) at the request of BP that include ongoing evaluations of offshore work, explains Allison Tepper, NIOSH chief of Health Evaluation & Technical Assistance Branch. Although these NIOSH studies involve independent follow-up monitoring, the HHE reports thus far rely heavily on BP information. NIOSH’s website explains:

The incident forms are filled out by BP safety officials, as opposed to healthcare personnel, and do not contain strict medical diagnoses of injury or illness. This method of employer-generated data collection is standard occupational safety and health practice. BP is sharing the information for each incident, but the data it provides to NIOSH does not include the names of the BP employees, contract workers and volunteers. In addition, since the data is being collected by BP, NIOSH cannot independently verify the accuracy and completeness of the data.

Health hazard evaluations can also be done independently of an employer if requested by three employees, but it does not appear that any such HHE has been initiated to date.

At the Senate hearing on dispersants, both Senator Mikulski and a witness, Louisiana Bucket Brigade executive director Anne Rolfes, raised concerns about possible gaps in monitoring of response-worker health effects. Rolfes pointed out that while state and federal agencies are doing health surveillance and illness and injury record-keeping, because BP has its own medical and first-aid services, there may be additional medical records that are not being shared and to which there is no public access. “I think there needs to be some kind of intervention to get those workers back into the mainstream,” said Rolfes, so that their records do not remain entirely private to BP.

“I do think about these workers… and we also think about past experiences where people who did wonderful things and ended up with very serious consequences, and we were told the chemistry was okay or it wasn’t a problem,” responded Mikulski “And now we have this oil spill and it’s one more ‘oh well we don’t know and we need more research.’

“So,” she said, agreeing with the need for open records and better protective measures, “we’re going to do something about it.”

“I wish we could channel some of this attention elsewhere,” said Barab when we spoke a week before the Senate hearing. “But we’re going to stay focused as we don’t want to get into a World Trade Center situation.”

While these events are clearly very different, the comparison has come up often as a tragic caution about the perils of ignoring response-worker health – and the importance of devoting sufficient resources to protecting workers, wherever they are, from hazardous pollutants.

Cross posted at The Pump Handle

The post What We Still Don’t Know About the BP Oil Spill appeared first on The Faster Times.

He’s not the only one seeing oiled and dead sea life: A research team from Texas A&M University out on the Gulf in June also reported what looked to be hundreds of dead sea cucumbers but were actually invertebrates in the tunicate family that are important to the marine food web. Other research teams have seen dead man o’ war jellyfish as well.

“We had just finished working for Apache [an oil company working in the Gulf] when the Deepwater Horizon sank and my company got a call from AMPOL [American Pollution Control Corporation],” Willman tells me. “A skimming unit and oil recovery pump was put on our boat,” he explains. Since late April, he and his wife, who works as his deckhand, along with a rotating crew of four to five, have been working out within 5 miles of the Deepwater Horizon site. Typically they’re out on the water for two to three weeks at a time, then off for a week.

(AMPOL, an environmental services company based in Iberia, LA has apparently been engaged by the Marine Spill Response Corporation (MSRC). MSRC is a non-profit company formed after the Exxon Valdez oil spill to provide “oil spill response services,” among them aircraft to spray dispersant, skimmers, boom, barges, and communications equipment. MSRC is funded by the Marine Preservation Association and its member companies, of which BP is one.)

When I speak to Willman the boat is docked for repairs. Tropical Storm Alex has just blown through and the water is still too rough for skimming.

What skimmers do “We’re out there with a 100-barrel tank on the back of our boat,” Willman explains. A pump on a boom — or floating arm, as he describes it — pumps oil and water into the tank. This mixture is allowed to settle, the water pumped off, and the process repeated until the tank holds nothing but oil. The full tank is then taken to a barge and the whole process begins again.

Part of the skimmer’s job is locating oil to remove. On days when they can’t find enough concentrated oil to pump, says Willman, “We end up driving through dispersed oil with our propellers and know we’re going to sink it.” He explains how hard the diffuse oil is to avoid and how this only adds to the challenge of containing the oil. “We haven’t made a dent at best,” he says.

“Why are we using all these little boats?” he wonders, instead of fewer larger capacity vessels.

Willman describes how back in May when BP tried to plug up the well with drilling mud (a procedure dubbed “top kill”) the water where they were working was covered “with an acre of this oil based mud …It almost broke the skimming unit. We couldn’t scrub it off and we couldn’t get it off with degreaser.”

He also tells me his experience with the decontamination process when returning to port. Essentially, he says, it’s been a hosing down by series of small boats. During one step, “A boat named the Jan F. comes alongside with a firehose and sprays down the side of our boat. That’s it. Nothing else, no degreaser.” There’s also a visual inspection, but oil on the boat’s hull is just being “knocked off into the water,” says Willman. He worries that this only adds to the existing contamination problems at the mouth of the Mississippi. Two days after I speak to Willman an oil sheen and tarballs from the Deepwater Horizon are spotted in Lake Ponchartrain.

Coast Guard Lieutenant Rob Schmidt explains to me that there’s “double booming” – hard and absorbent boom at the secondary decontamination sites and that either Coast Guard pollution officers or decontamination team leaders are on site to verify the cleaning. “Believe me, we hear from people if there are boats in marinas that are not cleaned,” he says.

Worries about health Willman says he typically works with a steady crew. Now, he says, he’s been sent crews who’ve had only three days training and have never run a skimming unit before. “I’ve been in hazardous situations before,” he tells me, but many of the new crews have no such experience and very little overall experience.

“They’re flying dispersant over us. They’re lighting fires sometimes starting at 6:30 in the morning,” he tells me. “I’ve seen as many as 20 fires a day,” he says of the controlled burning of surface oil. “There’s smoke in the air. There’s oil, there’s benzene, there’s dispersant … When the burns start there are clouds of smoke and a trail of smoke all the way to the horizon.”

In the heat and sun out on the water, he says, you can almost see the “sheen evaporate off the top of the Gulf of Mexico.”

“And I feel really funky when we are out there,” he tells me. “When I wake up out there, my heart starts fluttering. It’s like you smoked a pack of cigarettes then held your breath,” says Willman, who says he hasn’t smoked in 9 months. “I get an immediate headache when I come in contact with crude oil,” he says. “And my skin itches like it’s cracking.” His wife, Misty, says she’s experienced what she calls “heart flutters,” what she describes as feeling like unexpected rushes of adrenalin. “Everyone out there is coughing,” says Willman. “People are spitting stuff up in the morning and you can feel your blood pressure.”

“I’m 35 years old. I’m a healthy guy. But I don’t feel myself. I’m light-headed and get dizzy. I’m getting headaches and my eyes burn. I get mood swings and I can’t stop scratching,” says Willman. “I don’t know now much longer this can go on before it has a detrimental effect.”

A number of these symptoms – headaches, dizziness, skin itching – are consistent with oil vapor and solvent exposure, explains Dr. Rose Goldman, associate professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health. “It’s a complex system,” she says of potential exposure out on the oiled waters of the Gulf. There are volatile organic compounds coming off the oil. There may be an oil and water mist mixture. If there’s burning nearby there will be smoke and particulates, and there’s heat. “I can’t say which symptoms are associated with which exposure,” she explains, “but careful monitoring should be done so we can find out how best to protect these workers.”

I ask Willman about pay and benefits. “We’re all on a day rate,” Willman tells me. “Twenty-four hour days. On call 24 hours but work 12, off 12.” There’s no hazard pay, he says, and no additional per diem. “Fifty percent of deckhands don’t have health insurance,” Willman tells me. “You pay out of pocket or with a credit card and get reimbursed under workers comp… If you get hurt you hope the company rep. will meet you at the hospital.”

“There are paramedics on the Seacor Lee – the lead vessel – where there are also MSRC and BP reps,” he explains. The Seacor Lee is also where he’s been told Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) are kept. “When you ask for an MSDS, you have to check with a supervisor,” he tells me.

(Seacor Marine provides logistical and equipment support to offshore drilling operations around the world. An initial call to MSRC for details on the company’s role in the Deepwater Horizon response was answered by a woman who said someone – she wasn’t allowed to say who – would return my call. A day later, a Coast Guard officer called to confirm my inquiry to MSRC. She said she was calling from the Houma, LA Joint Information Center but when I called her number, I reached the BP headquarters in Houma. Eventually, I reached MSRC spokesperson Judith Roos who explained via email that “MSRC personnel supervise MSRC skimming operations on MSRC assets.” MSRC response vessels have medics on board. MSRC is working directly for BP and also through contractors who are providing various response services, including skimming.)

“I don’t want to be out there in this crap much longer,” says Willman. “I want to know the long term effects of this stuff,” he tells me.

“Can we get some monitoring?” Misty asks.

“We’ve already screwed up our ecology. We’ve already killed a generation of fish,” says Willman. “My children’s children will be seeing this.”

Cross posted at The Pump Handle

Photo by Deepwater Horizon Response

The post Meet Captain Dave: What It’s Like Skimming Deepwater Horizon Oil appeared first on The Faster Times.

“When the oil hit last week, people were walking up and down the beach in tears,” Bonner tells me.

Dauphin Island, a fish-shaped sliver of land at the southwest end of Mobile Bay, is home to about 1,300 permanent residents, vacation homes, and the businesses that cater to them. The day I’m there, many of the shops and restaurants are closed. Oil began washing ashore here in early May. There’s no boom along the water line and little visual evidence of oil now except small tar balls. BP has a claims office here, and Catholic Charities is offering qualifying residents emergency gas and electricity assistance.

“They’re here waiting for oil,” a man standing at the end of the pier says as we look out over the beach toward the clean-up crews.

Most of the oil spill clean-up crew is resting under a tent shelter. When I ask what they’ve been doing today, they say “no comment,” and “we can’t talk to you.” But the men in the nearby beach buggy who are supervising tell me they work for Clean Harbors – an “environmental, energy, and industrial services” company based in Norwell, MA. Most of the clean up crew are wearing matching t-shirts that say “Turnaround” in big white letters on the back.

“Our crews are trained and some of these folks we’ve worked with before,” one supervisor tells me. When I ask what kind of training, he says 40-hour training. This is the Hazardous Waste Operations (HAZWOPER) training typically required for hazardous materials clean-up work as opposed to the 4-hour training allowed to get lots of workers to emergencies, a provision established in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill. Many Deepwater Horizon response workers have been certified with 4-hour training.

As I’m leaving the beach several school busses pull up and let off people who look just like those I’ve seen on the beach clean up crews, all with the same plastic sheathed ID tags, many wearing safety vests.

Back on Grand Isle, Louisiana two days later I see similar crews on the beach and in school busses in nearby parking lots. Curious about where these workers are coming from, I stop by the Community Center where a Louisiana Workforce Commission (LWC) representative is stationed. When he finds out I’m a journalist, he tells me to call the LWC public information office.

Louisiana Workforce Commission Also Wants Answers “If you find out, please let me know,” says public information director, Lynn Dias-Button when I ask if she can tell me exactly who is being hired for beach clean-up work and by whom. “We’ve made requests to BP on this very issue,” she says. “We [the Louisiana Workforce Commission] have been promised this information. The Louisiana Attorney General has requested this information,” she adds.

“What we have been told is that the main contractors for BP are working through subcontractors and subcontractors,” says Dias-Button. She explains that people who’ve applied for clean-up jobs through the LWC are not being hired because the contractors say the jobs have already been filled. According to the LWC, the agency has received more than 13,000 applications for clean-up work.

LWC has been collecting applications because BP said that it would make “all reasonable efforts to employ locally qualified workers as a priority.” At this point, the LWC doesn’t know if that’s really happening.

Pursuing this issue, LWC executive director Curt Eysink wrote to BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles on June 17th to follow up on unanswered questions about BP’s hiring practices raised by LWC in May. In his letter to Suttles, Eysink cited correspondence “sent in response to an incident in St. Bernard Parish on May 14 in which several people from outside Louisiana who had been hired by a BP contractor were removed on suspicion of being undocumented aliens.”

“Since then,” Eysink wrote to BP on June 17th:

…participants in the Vessels of Opportunity Program have reported encountering boats from other states working for BP in Louisiana waters. An oilfield staffing company with offices in New Iberia, Maxum Industries, acknowledged on Monday that it had bused in labor from Mobile, AL, and Brownsville, TX, to fill vacancies with a BP contractor in Louisiana. It is apparent that the instructions to BP contractors have not been followed.In addition, we also have no confirmation that BP has created a reporting mechanism that ensures its contractors “are making all reasonable efforts to employ local qualified workers as a priority.”

Despite BP’s assurances that reports on state of residency of oil spill workers exist and would be forwarded to the State of Louisiana, we have not received those reports. It should also be noted that the LWC and other agencies of the State of Louisiana have made numerous requests for this information.”

In his letter Eysink also requested that BP – and all contractors and subcontractors – immediately report detailed information, including training and home addresses, for everyone hired for Louisiana Deepwater Horizon incident clean up work. In addition, he asked that BP require all contractors to use the LWC pool of qualified Louisiana resident job seekers and to fill clean-up jobs with those workers before offering them to out-of-state residents.

“Given the urgency of these issues we request your response by close of business on Monday, June 21,” wrote Eysink. Responding on the 21st, BP Chief Compliance Officer Gary Paulson told Eysink that “BP is requiring contractors to provide a written acknowledgement of their understanding of and commitment to follow BP’s instructions.” Paulson stated that “contractors hire locally where qualified workers are readily available,” and that BP has implemented a process “to better track state of residence data” and is “validating this information.” But BP, wrote Paulson, cannot comply with Louisiana’s request for social security numbers, dates of birth, or home addresses for all contract workers “because we do not collect this information from the contractors.”

Labor experts explain that this is common practice: contractors and sub-contractors do not typically submit employee information to the company that’s engaged them – in this case, BP. Contractors are expected to hire legally and comply with criteria set forth in their contracts. Any scrutiny of employee information would be at BP’s discretion or come from a governmental agency if deemed necessary. So on the Gulf Coast, state governments must, for now, rely on BP’s assurances, effectively leaving firm details about staffing of clean-up crews unanswered.

In his response, Paulson also said BP would “commit to follow up and corrective action as appropriate” if “substantial populations of non-state residents” are being hired or bused in for oil spill response efforts. But given the need for large numbers of trained response workers, adds Paulson, “BP is unwilling to prohibit non-residents from attending oil-spill response training in Louisiana.” This does not precisely answer Eysink’s question, which was about priority hiring of state residents.

In, Alabama, the Department of Industrial Relations has posted a notice saying that BP is hiring through its contractor, a company called P2S. Department spokesperson Tara Hutchinson explained that those seeking response work through the state are being channeled to P2S. Response workers are being hired from Mobile and Baldwin counties, she said. This was confirmed by Keith Stephens, spokesperson for the Fluor Corporation, the Fortune 200 company that owns Sugarland, TX-based P2S. But P2S is not the only BP contractor hiring in Alabama – and as in Louisiana, currently it’s hard to determine exactly who is being hired.

P2S does not have its own spokesperson, hence my call to Fluor. Clean Harbors has not returned several calls made in the course of over a week, nor has Ashland Services, a Louisiana-based contractor overseeing crews on the beach in Grand Isle. I reached BP’s training contractor, PEC, on several occasions, but they said they would not speak with news media.

While state labor departments want workers’ information to see if their residents are getting cleanup jobs, other agencies want this information to track any adverse health outcomes associated with cleanup work. NIOSH – with support of BP and the Unified Command – has just established a voluntary roster to follow up with workers about possible work-related illnesses or injuries. As of June 25th, 20,357 workers were included.

Meanwhile, I’m still trying to find out what organization the “Turnaround” on the Dauphin Island beach crew T-shirts refers to.

And at Gulf Islands National Seashore at Perdido Key, Florida, a woman who’s come to the beach with a mini-van full of children asks Coast Guard Lieutenant Matt Anderson if she can get her money back. “The water smells like oil,” she says.

Cross posted at The Pump Handle

Photo by Deepwater Horizon Response“

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