"It’s as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid.” That’s what Jamie Griffin
says the BP man told her about the smelly, rainbow-streaked gunk coating
the floor of the “floating hotel” where Griffin was feeding hundreds of
cleanup workers during the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
Apparently, the workers were tracking the gunk inside on their boots.
Griffin, as chief cook and maid, was trying to clean it. But even
boiling water didn’t work.
Griffin did as she was told: “I tried Pine-Sol, bleach, I even tried
Dawn on those floors.” As she scrubbed, the mix of cleanser and gunk
occasionally splashed onto her arms and face.
Within days, the 32-year-old single mother was coughing up blood and
suffering constant headaches. She lost her voice. “My throat felt like
I’d swallowed razor blades,” she says.
Then things got much worse.
Like hundreds, possibly thousands, of workers on the cleanup, Griffin
soon fell ill with a cluster of excruciating, bizarre, grotesque
ailments. By July, unstoppable muscle spasms were twisting her hands
into immovable claws. In August, she began losing her short-term memory.
After cooking professionally for 10 years, she couldn’t remember the
recipe for vegetable soup; one morning, she got in the car to go to
work, only to discover she hadn’t put on pants. The right side, but only
the right side, of her body “started acting crazy. It felt like the
nerves were coming out of my skin. It was so painful. My right leg
swelled—my ankle would get as wide as my calf—and my skin got incredibly
itchy.”
We need to check out the cleaning crews and their health now.
http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/bp-spill-was-worse-you-knew
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