Voices From the Spill, Marylee Orr and Wilma Subra, The Human Toll
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It’s impossible to ignore images of oil-soaked pelicans, dead dolphins, and sea turtles washed up onshore. But for all the stomach-churning induced by a man-made disaster, the human toll of an oil spill is sometimes overlooked.
Nausea, coughing, rectal bleeding, and even skin lesions are starting to show up with regularity among Gulf residents and out-of-towners who worked to clean up the spill. Countless others, both directly and indirectly, have been victims of the disaster.
Dr. Michael Robichaux of Raceland, Louisiana—a former state senator and physician—didn’t believe there were links among the patients he began seeing six months ago related to the oil spill. Today he’s changed his mind and calls the impacts of the spill “one of the greatest human health issues in the United States.” He cites examples of the World Trade Center and the Exxon Valdez spill as other accidents where long-term impact on human health took years to truly decipher.
Dr. Mike’s biggest acolytes are long-time Louisiana environmentalist Marylee Orr, director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, and Wilma Subra, chemist, Macarthur grant “genius” and community educator. The women have been focused round-the-clock on how the spill is hurting the Gulf’s most valuable resource: its people.
“Many of these people are in the worst shape imaginable: They are sick, which in many cases contributed to them losing their jobs. Now they have no insurance … and no one believes it was the spill that caused their ailments,” says Marylee. “There’s no multi-billion dollar fund set up to take care of them. All we’re trying to do is make sure these people – and those who will be sick in the future – aren’t forgotten.”
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