Media banned from secret US Government clinic treating BP toxic cleanup agent victims

In a belated vindication of the Slog’s campaign, Huffington Post’s Jason Linkins posted a superb piece of reporting this afternoon (BST) identifying the nature and secrecy of US government treatment of toxically poisoned BP cleanup workers. In a gripping piece, Linkins describes the blacked-out clinic thus:

‘Ringed with barbed wire-topped chain link fencing, it’s tightly restricted by police and private security guards’

The deep secrecy surrounding this human disaster is summed up well in this paragraph:

‘For over two weeks, my NewsHour colleagues and I reached out to media contacts at HHS, the U.S. Coast Guard and everyone listed as a possible media contact for BP, in an attempt to visit the unit and get a general sense of how many people were being treated there , who they were and what illnesses they had. We got nowhere. It was either “access denied,” or no response at all. It was something that none of us had ever encountered while covering a disaster. We’re usually at some point provided access to the health services being offered by the federal government.’

As the Slog first reported on 15th June, immediately after oil started escaping into the Gulf of Mexico, BP started spraying more than a million gallons of a Corexit onto the oil slick. Corexit is a highly dangerous and little-understood toxic agent banned in the EU and many other countries around the world.

Soon afterwards – as opprobrium rained down on its corporate head – BP hired Louisiana fishermen and others to help with cleanup and containment operations; but according to Slog sources, the company didn’t supply the workers with proper equipment. A fortnight later, some seventy workers fell ill. They complained, as Linkins attests, of ‘irritated throats, coughing, shortness of breath and nausea’. Hospital admissions began on May 26….and then, once Brokovich broke the story at Reuters’ website, a news blackout began.

Life may sometimes imitate art, but increasingly these days it imitates conspiracy theory. Just because conspiracy nutters are printing stuff, it doesn’t mean there’s no conspiracy.

Where there is truth in conspiracy, you’ll find The Slog.