When he couldn’t get well, he had his blood tested and found it contained high levels of chemicals, which his physician attributed to BP’s oil disaster,” Truthout reported in 2014. “Not long after his exposure, Yerkes became violently ill, started bleeding from his nose and ears, and began vomiting blood.

“I’ve lost five friends now who were also exposed to BP’s oil and dispersants, who were unable to seek proper treatment to extract the chemicals from their bodies before the exposure killed them.” “I have spent the years since the spill happened literally trying to survive,” Yerkes told Truthout in 2014. Yerkes was exposed to both oil and dispersants while cleaning up oil. Joe Yerkes is a Florida fisherman who joined the cleanup effort of the disaster after he was put out of work by the oil in his fishing waters. “Several chemicals and chemical compounds listed in the NIOSH report, such as styrene, toluene and xylene, are now present in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of BP’s dispersants mixing with BP’s crude oil,” IPS reported, a situation which other scientific reports show creates a toxicity 40 times worse than the oil alone. “The dispersants contain chemicals that many scientists and toxicologists have warned are dangerous to humans, marine life and wildlife,” IPS reported in 2010, adding:Ī March 1987 report titled “Organic Solvent Neurotoxicity,” by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), states: “The acute neurotoxic effects of organic solvent exposure in workers and laboratory animals are narcosis, anesthesia, central nervous system (CNS) depression, respiratory arrest, unconsciousness, and death. Critics accuse BP of sinking the oil with the dispersants as a means of minimizing fines under the Clean Water Act. In response to the disaster, BP used 1.8 million gallons of highly toxic Corexit dispersants in what the oil giant claimed was an effort to keep the oil from reaching shore.

Photo by Florida Sea Grant, on Flickr Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon April 21, 2010.

Oil gushed for 87 days unchecked, creating the single-largest marine oil disaster in US history. In April 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil drilling platform exploded, killing 11 workers before sinking 5,000 feet to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

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