Workers Link Exxon Valdez Cleanup to Illnesses 3/24/99

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Workers Link Exxon Valdez Cleanup to Illnesses

A decade later, some claim in lawsuits that chemicals used to mop up huge

spill are killing them

The Salt Lake Tribune 3/24/1999

ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- More than 11,000 workers from all corners of the

country flocked to Prince Sound in the summer of 1989 to clean up

Exxon Valdez oil. They and others came for grimy jobs with long hours, but

with overtime they earned as much as $1,750 a week.

That summer, Exxon and its contractors told workers that the weathered

crude oil they were mopping up and the chemical cleaners they were handling

posed no risk if they avoided skin contact and took appropriate precautions.

After a decade battling odd illnesses, some spill workers have concluded

Exxon's health claims were wrong, and two dozen have filed suit. They think

the oil they cleaned up, the oil mist they breathed, and the chemical

cleaners they handled made them sick and may be slowly killing them.

They have doctors who have concluded they are right. But Exxon's medical

experts disagree.

It has been 10 years to the day since the spill. Since then, millions of

dollars have been spent tagging red salmon, radio-collaring seals and

studying mudworms and microscopic copepods to determine if there are

lingering effects from crude-oil exposure.

But despite warnings by a team of public-health experts that summer that

workers may be at risk from exposure to toxic or hazardous materials, nobody

has studied the effects of the cleanup on workers. Internal company memos

and government reports show Exxon rebuffed efforts by the health officials

who tried. And to this day, only Exxon has the detailed medical records that

could be used for epidemiological studies.

" ly, in all the litigation, and through all the controversy after

the spill, nobody has ever asked the question: What about human health? "

said Middaugh, Alaska state epidemiologist.

Teitelbaum, a private toxicologist from Denver hired by one of the

workers, concurs. " Why didn't somebody look further? Why don't we have

better diagnoses? "

The oil company declined repeated requests for interviews about worker

health and the two dozen lawsuits that workers have filed. In a

four-paragraph statement issued by spokesman Tom Cirigliano, Exxon didn't

directly address the merits of the lawsuits' claims, but noted that those

workers represented only a tiny fraction of the total cleanup work force and

that each lawsuit involved unique circumstances.

" There is nothing in these claims to suggest that the cleanup

systematically produced any illnesses or injuries, " the company said.

Exxon confirmed that seven of the suits have been settled out of court,

while eight were dismissed by judges. The settlement agreements are sealed,

although a separate court case involving insurance companies reveals Exxon

paid one worker $2 million.

Exxon and its main cleanup contractor, Anchorage-based Veco, acknowledged

that summer that many workers got sick. But Exxon said then, and in the

prepared statement now, that the illnesses were " a flulike upper-respiratory

illness " that spread because of crowded living conditions on the barges

where workers bunked. The illness became known as the " Valdez Crud " and

Exxon said it spread even to lawyers and claims adjusters who had little

direct exposure to the cleanup and its materials.

Exxon never revealed, and government officials never discovered,

precisely how widespread the problem was. But years later, Exxon's internal

medical reports showed up in court records. They revealed that an

unspecified number of the 11,000 workers made 5,600 clinic visits for

upper-respiratory illnesses that summer. The source of the illness was never

identified.

Veco attorney Jack said he has seen no evidence to suggest workers

were overexposed to hazardous substances during the cleanup.

But some workers are suspicious. In the years since the spill, their

lawsuits have raised questions about whether the " Valdez Crud " was the flu

or a reaction to toxins. They question the amount of hazardous-materials

training they got and whether they had enough protection from the oil mist

they breathed and the weathered crude and the chemical cleaners they

handled.

About two dozen lawsuits were filed against Exxon. The suits are known as

" toxic tort " cases. They're hard cases to prove because it may take years

for diseases like cancer to show, and even then, factors like smoking, diet,

pre-existing conditions or genetics might be to blame or might have

contributed to the disease. Whether a person's health is damaged by exposure

to a toxic substance also depends on the dose, the duration of exposure,

whether a person breathed, ate or touched the material and the individual's

sensitivity, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and

Disease Registry.