OSHA Report Released on BP Response Workers - Injuries & Illnesses - April 22 2010 thru July 4 2010

OSHA's Efforts to Protect Workers

"OSHA has stationed safety and health professionals throughout the Gulf Region who visit worksites every day to protect oil response cleanup workers from health and safety hazards. OSHA staff is evaluating the safety at worksites around the Gulf, covering the vessels of opportunity, beach cleanup, staging areas, decontamination, distribution and deployment sites. When OSHA finds problems or learns about them from workers, it immediately brings them to the attention of BP and ensures that they are corrected. OSHA also raises its concerns through the Unified Command so they are addressed across the entire response area. OSHA is also ensuring that workers are provided, free of charge, appropriate personal protective equipment such as boots, gloves and other protective equipment.

Exposure to Toxic Chemicals. To ensure that workers are not exposed to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, OSHA is conducting its own independent air monitoring both on shore and on the cleanup vessels and is reviewing data from BP, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). At this time, OSHA has identified no exposures that exceed any of the most up-to-date standards for hazardous chemicals. See more information on OSHA's sampling strategy, detailed findings

In order to keep track of whether or not workers are getting sick, it is extremely important that OSHA, NIOSH and other federal agencies receive accurate reports on any symptoms or illnesses suffered by workers. So far, more than half of cleanup worker injuries and illnesses required only first aid treatment. The most common injuries onshore and offshore are cuts and bruises, as well as insect bites/stings for onshore workers and sprains for those working offshore. The most common illness is heat stress. See the full NIOSH Report or the BP Deepwater Horizon Recordable Injury and Illness Data.

Set forth below is recordable injury and illness data for the Unified Command response to the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico incident. Response workers have had both non-recordable first aid cases and recordable injuries and illnesses. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulations concerning recordability found at 29 CFR Part 1904 were followed in determining whether an injury or illness was considered to be recordable or a first aid case. This data covers the time frame from the beginning of the response on April 22, 2010 up to the present. Some of the incidents represented by the data below are still being investigated and are subject to future changes.

The Unified Command will update this data when additional information becomes available. At this time the Deepwater Horizon response is being managed out of the following locations:New Orleans, Louisiana, Houma, Louisiana, Houston and Mobile, Alabama. This data is reported separately for each of these sites, and some of the injury and illness data below is presented for the sites individually.

This log covers occupational injuries and vehicle accidents that incident response workers have reported in the course of their work to respond to the Deepwater Horizon incident. It does include reports by persons employed by local, state or federal government agencies. It does not include reports of injuries arising during or from the incident."

Detailed stats here: www.osha.gov...

Full Health Hazard Evaluation Here:

www.cdc.gov...

NIOSH Report of BP Illness and Injury Data:
www.cdc.gov...










[edit on 6-7-2010 by manta78]

Interesting. A lot of head and stomach and chest issues. And car wrecks

What are they doing in Houma?

Did I miss what the total worker population is?

Did you see all the van crashes... must be like a demo derby out there.. are these people intoxicated? Err, maybe they are on all the fumes from the corexit?

reply to post by ~Lucidity


I have not seen that yet. It did however list 489 illnesses and 618 injuries recorded so far.

Here's one update that I just located, but again it does not specify the total number of cleanup workers, only the total number involved in the response:

"Though more than 30,000 people have been hired in the response, the spokesman said he did not know how many of those were cleanup jobs. Many are claims processors, support staff and even people, like himself, hired to answer press calls."

Source: scpr.org...

[edit on 6-7-2010 by manta78]

reply to post by E-ville


Yes, I noticed that too. Dizzy...aches...chest pains...all that. A lot of accidents. I still haven't run across what the total population of workers is.

CNN's Dr. Gupta did a story about 128 workers who had to go to a clinic BP set up. Here.

Crazy stuff.

reply to post by manta78


I stopped reading when they said there were no hazardous chemicals or conditions.

Calling BS on OSHA.

Well, its to be expected. There purpose is to tax/fine.