As BP moves to seal the Deepwater Horizon well permanently, more than 31,000 cleanup workers continue to rely on incomplete and at times misleading information about toxic exposure to the spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
Public health officials say they face a daunting challenge: how to inform workers about the possible dangers when studies on the toxic effects of such a large spill have never been done.
Research has provided enough clues about some of the chemicals, however, that independent scientists and worker health advocates say that BP and the Obama administration should be more aggressive in warning workers about the possible long-term health effects of toxins, especially given complaints of worker illnesses that surfaced after the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
"It's sort of a legalistic framework that the government has adopted in saying there are not a lot of studies so we don't know a lot," said Dr. Michael Harbut, who specializes in occupational and environmental medicine and has treated oil industry workers.
"It's true that there have not been extensive studies about crude oil dumping into the Gulf in the millions of barrels quantity and being mixed with dispersant," he said, "but there are thousands of studies about what happens when people and animals come into contact with these chemicals, and those studies demonstrate that they are not benign."
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