Spill Making Louisianans Sick

May 21, 2010

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New Iberia, Louisiana – Wilma Subra wears many hats: Community activist. Grandmother of six. MacArthur Genius. Wife of forty years. Perhaps most importantly she is a trained chemist. And when things go bad in southern Louisiana – or others states, for that matter; she recently testified in a dubious water case in my neighborhood in New York – she gets called to weigh in subjectively on what exactly is wrong with the air, ground or water.

Which means, in Louisiana, she stays very busy.

And when people as far from the oil spill as New Orleans started complaining about feeling sick and blaming the spill – headaches, irritated eyes, nose, throat and lungs, nauseous, dizzy – Wilma started comparing and collecting atmospheric data. What she’s finding is that the spill isn’t just putting the ocean and marine life at risk, but the very air that southern Louisianans breathe. For the rest of my dispatch from New Iberia, see www.takepart.com.