Gulf Spill Cleanup Health Concerns
WHITFIELD: All right, we continue to watch what's taking place underwater in the Gulf of Mexico. BP says they have removed the containment cap from the well and are working on the process of replacing it with a new one. It's a complicated process, as you might imagine that will take the course of a few different days, several days, maybe up to 10 days. The new cap is expected to fit tighter and stop much the oil gushing out of the well, right now. So, looking for the silver lining in the Gulf, right now, is pretty difficult, but for people out of work, the cleanup does means a temporary paycheck. And the same happened, actually, during the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. But, 21 years later, some of those workers are still dealing with what they believe to be health problems related to that clean up. And now, some health experts are worried that it just might be happening again in the Gulf. Here's Drew Griffin with our Special Investigations Unit.</s>DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS UNIT CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Roy Dalthorp says he started getting sick 21 years ago, when the Exxon Valdez hit a reef in Alaska. But back then he thought the Valdez was a blessing.</s>ROY DALTHORP, EXXON VALDEZ CLEANUP WORKER: I was -- I was out of a job. I was in hurtsville. I was defiantly heading to it. I had no choices on that because I was behind in my house payments and so -- and no health insurance.</s>GRIFFIN: For six weeks, he worked on a ship that super heated sea water to pressure wash Exxon's crude oil off of rocks. His photos onboard show the steam that he says was an oily smelling mist, permeating the ship where he worked 16-hour days and that is when the cough began.</s>DALTHORP: Nobody ever checked with us, nobody. They never did a follow up on us, never asked if we ever had any consequences of it. They could a cared less. I'm serious. There was no follow up.</s>GRIFFIN: Exxon told us it doesn't know how many cleanup workers became sick. Dalthorp never filed a lawsuit, never filed a claim. He could never prove the work he did on the Valdez made him sick. (on camera): Exxon did pay to study the health effects of almost every single creature that came in contact with oil in Prince William Sound; every creature, but one.</s>DENNIS MESTAS, ATTORNEY: From clams and mussels to fish and otters and even deer and bears, but they never studied what this oil was doing to the workers, to the human beings in Prince William Sound.</s>GRIFFIN (voice-over): Alaska attorney Dennis Mestas represented one of the few workers who did sue, but in the process found out that hundreds of workers involved in the cleanup had fallen sick. (on camera): And you found all of this out years later, based on...</s>MESTAS: On one worker that I represented.</s>GRIFFIN: Who is still sick to this day.</s>MESTAS: Who is still sick to this day. Even Exxon was forced to concede, eventually, that Gary Stubblefield was a very sick man.</s>GRIFFIN (voice-over): Mestas' client, Gary Stubblefield, sued Exxon and the Valdez cleanup. Mestas traveled from Alaska to an Exxon office in Houston where Stubblefield's medical records and those of thousands of other cleanup workers were being held, records Exxon has asked a court to seal for privacy reasons.</s>MESTAS: I was shocked, yeah...</s>GRIFFIN: Mestas says the records revealed of 11,000 cleanup workers, 6,722 had gotten sick. It was explained away as a simple virus, the so-called Exxon crud, a flu or cold that Exxon was not required to report to federal health officials. At the time NIOSH, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, was in agreement.</s>MESTAS: Total bull -- BS. The only epidemiology was that there were a few head colds that they could identify and NIOSH didn't have any of the records.</s>GRIFFIN: Exxon never admitted fault in Stubblefield's case, but reportedly settled the lawsuit for $2 million; Stubblefield, one of the very few workers to get compensation. Exxon says the few lawsuits brought failed to show any evidence of injuries or illnesses known to be caused by exposure to crude oil or the chemicals they used to clean it up. Keeping them honest, Dennis Mestas, the attorney says he is concerned that workers cleaning up in the Gulf today may be headed for the same fate as the Exxon Valdez workers. They get sick while their medical records are controlled by BP. Louisiana's Health Department has reported 128 cleanup workers believed to be sick from exposure to this spill. But BP tells us they have recorded just five illnesses related to inhalation exposures in the entire Gulf. (on camera): BP is also insisting that government air testing is showing, "We have not had a single reading above OSHA regulations to date." And as for respirators, the company says, "There has been no demonstrated need for them, no single issue high enough to warrant a respirator."</s>DR.  RIKI OTT, MARINE TOXICOLOGIST: On anything that I thought...</s>GRIFFIN (voice-over): Dr. Riki Ott, an environmental activist, studied the effects of the Exxon Valdez spill 21 years ago. With this BP spill, she says, once again, out-of-work fishermen are lining up for cleanup jobs that she says will put them in harm's way.</s>OTT: I'm feeling like BP is forcing them into this situation where BP holds all the cards and BP is letting these workers get sick.</s>GRIFFIN: Back in Alaska, Roy Dalthorp's coughing has never stopped, he now has skin rashes. His health, literally crumbling.</s>DALTHORP: I'm going blind.</s>GRIFFIN (on camera): You think you were poisoned out there?</s>DALTHORP: Yes. Yes. Silently poisoned, and that's what's happening to those people down in the Gulf.</s>GRIFFIN: Fred, BP and federal officials says it's not going to happen in the Gulf, that they're monitoring the situation, right now. But, a congressional committee does want to look at the Exxon spill, back in 1989, and see what wasn't done, apparently, in terms of monitoring these workers so they can possibly prevent mistakes from being happening again. In fact, the Commerce Energy Committee has now sent a note to the chairman of Exxon Mobile asking that company to dig up all its health records from the 1989 spill and send them to Congress so the officials there can look over what was done -- Fred.</s>WHITFIELD: Drew Griffin, thanks so much. Actress Pam Grier, her acting career spans four decades. You may member her as "Foxy Brown" and now, she opens up about the men in her life in her memoir. It's more of my face-to-face interview with Pam Grier, right after this.