Mystery Illnesses Plague Louisiana Oil Spill Crews

Raceland, Louisiana : Jamie Simon worked on a barge in the oily waters for six months following the BP spill last year , cooking for the cleanup workers , washing their clothes  and tidying up after them.

One year later , the 32-year-old said she  still suffers from a range of debilitating health problems , including raceing heartbeat , vomiting , dizziness , ear infections , swollen throat , poor sight in one eye and memory loss.

Jamie blames toxic elements in the crude oil and the dispersants sprayed to dissolve it after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig  exploded in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles (80 kilmeters) off the coast of Louisisna on April 20, 2010.

"I was exposed to those chemicals , which I question , and they told me it was just as safe as Dawn dishwashing  liquid and there was nothing for me to worry about ," she said of the BP bosses at the job site.

 The local doctor , Mike Robichaux , said he has seen as many as 60 patients like Simon in recent weeks , as this small town of 10,000 b ordered by swamp and sugar-cane fields grapples with a mysterious sickness that some believ e is all BP's fault.

Andy LeBoeuf, 51, said he was paid $1,500 per day to use his boat to go out on the water and lay boom to contain some of the 4.9 million barrels of oil that spewed from the bottom of the ocean after the BP well ruptured. But four months on the job left him ill and unable to work , and he said he recently had to refinance his home loan because he could not pay his taxes. "I have been sick for a long time , I just got sick  and couldn't get better ," LaBoeuf said , describing memory problems and a sore throat  that has nagged him for over a year.

Robichaux, an ear, nose and throat specialist whose office an  hour's drive southwest of New Orleans is nestled on a roadside marked with Handwritten signs advertising turtle meat for sale , saying he is treating many local patients in  their homes ."Their work ethic is so strong , they are so stoic , they don't want people to know when they are sick,"he said. "Ninety percent of them are getting worse ... nobody has a clue as to what it is."

According to a roster complied by the National Insititute for Occupational Safety and Health , a total of 52,000  workers were responding to the Gulf oil spill as of August 2010.The state of Louisiana has reported 415 cases of health problems linked to the spill , with symptoms  including sore throats, irritated eyes , respiratory tract infections , headaches and nauses. But Bernard Goldstein, an  environmental toxicologist and professor of the University of Pittsburg, said the US government's method of collecting health data on workers is flawed.

For instance, a major study of response workers  by the National Insititute of Environmental Health Sciences was not funded until six months after the spill, a critical delay that affects both the biology and the recall ability of the workers . "It's to late if you go  six months later," he told AFP.

Benzene , a known carcinogen present in crude oil , disappears from a person's blood within four months, Goldstein said. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, or PAHs , are pollutants that can cause genetic mutations and cancer. They are of particular interest in studying long-term health , but without a baseline for comparison it is difficult to know  where they came from ... the oil spill or somewhere  else in the environment . "They last in the body for a longer period of time  but they also get confounded by, if you will, obscured by other sources  of PAHs ," like eating barbeque meat or smoking cigarettes, said Goldstein.

Local chemist Wilma Subra has been helping test people's blood for volatile solvents , and said levels of benzene among clean-up workers , divers, fishermen  and crabbers are as high as 36 times that of the general population. "As the event progresses we are seeing more and more people who are desperately ill ," she said.

"Clearly it is showing that this is ongoing exposure," Subra said , noting that pathways include contact with the skin, eating contaminated seafood or breathing polluted air. "We have been asking the federal agencies to please provide medical care from physicians who are trained in toxic exposure." She said she has received no response.

Asked for comment , BP said in an e-mail that"protection of response workers was a top priority " and that it had conducted "extensive monitoring of response workers " in coordination with several government agencies.  "Illness and injury reports were tracted and documented  during the response , and the medical data indicate they did not differ appreciably from what would be expected among a workforce of this size under normal circumstances ," it added.

Any compensation for sick workers would fall under state law , and "BP does not make these determinations , which must be supported by acceptable medical evidence."

Jamie Simon says her way of life has been completely altered .She says she takes pain relievers every day just to function. A  couple of weeks ago, she read in a local newspaper that other ex-cleanup workers were feeling sick too, and her grandmother urged her to see a doctor . "I never put the two together , I am just realizing that this is possibly related , she said.

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