Are BP's Clean-up Workers In Jeopardy?
The Gulf of Mexico oil leak is the worst environmental disaster with greater impact on the coast lines and wild life but now a greater impact seems to be hitting the clean up worker's safety and health.
Online, June 10, 2010 (Newswire.com) - In the past few weeks, the world has been constantly observing the Gulf Of Mexico oil spill. This is perhaps the world's worst spill costing BP millions of dollar to control the situation. In between all the chaos, a new problem seems to emerge keeping BP in a tighter position. People have been speculating more on the impact of wild life as well on the shorelines but now according to the federal regulators, there are significant deficiencies in the way BP is handling the safety of the oil-spill workers. They have asked the Coast Guard to look into this matter and press the company to direct a litany of concerns.
The federal regulators had put a complain in an internal memo revealing the Obama administration's increasing concerns about the potential health and safety problems, which are posed by the oil spill.
According to BP, 22,000 workers have been deployed to confront the spill. Assistant secretary of OSHA, David Michaels, who wrote the memo, had raised the concerns on the day before seven oil-spill workers on boats off the Louisiana coast were hospitalized after they complained of dizziness, nausea and headaches. The Coast Guard Adm also witnessed a number of problems at various work sites.
Michaels wrote on the memo, "The organizational systems that BP currently has in place, particularly those related to worker safety and health training, protective equipment, and site monitoring, are not adequate for the current situation or the projected increase in cleanup operations."
He also added, "BP has also not been forthcoming with basic, but critical, safety and health information on injuries and exposures."
This memo was presented by Michaels when his agency came under attack for not being so aggressive enough for monitoring the company or contractors providing oil-spill cleanup training.
A spokesman for BP, Mr, Graham MacEwen, said that his company was taking the responsibility very seriously. According to the worker's safety advocates, OSHA should be giving more and the workers responsible for the clean up are getting only minimum training required where timing is four hours.
To the above criticism, Jordan Barab, the deputy assistant secretary of OSHA, said that the agency did not think those clean-up workers need more extensive training and as of now, the four-hour training is adequate.
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