05/04/2013 // Concord, CA, USA // LifeCare123 // Greg Vigna, MD, JD, Joe Motta, JD // (press release)
In response to the environmental disaster caused the BP Deep Horizon oil spill, low income workers, the unemployed, migrant workers, and prisoners were mobilized rapidly and across the Gulf Coast to clean up the toxic substance that resulted from the spill. These workers were subjected to numerous chemicals including petroleum products and oil dispersants under some of the most difficult conditions imaginable. Many of these individuals suffer with post-occupational dermatitis. There is compensation provided by an agreement with the Court.
Post-occupational dermatitis is ongoing dermatitis that occurs on a persistent or intermittent basis after exposure to prior occupational causative agents. Post-occupational dermatitis looks like an ordinary dermatitis which could consist of any of the following: red, scaly, oozing, or bumpy skin. It appears in areas of the body that are exposed and initially occurs around the time of exposure to causative agents. BP workers with contact dermatitis during their exposure would initially get better following termination of employment. Some workers would find a perpetuating cycle of skin irritation on exposed surfaces.
To most this perpetuating cycle would be nothing more than a minimal inconvenience that could be controlled by local medications and creams. To those exposed, who were intimately involved with the environmental irritants on a daily basis, an itching rash becomes a burden, it becomes a source of infection, and becomes a source of scaring and disfigurement. Itching rashes require costly creams, infections require oral antibiotics, and serious resistant infections require hospitalizations and IV antibiotics.
Only BP executives may feel their settlement was far too generous to provide for a ‘mere rash’. To the exposed and informed, they say otherwise.
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