Articles Posted in Toxic Injury

Oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico unabated Saturday, and officials conveyed little hope that the flow could be contained soon, forcing towns along the Gulf Coast to brace for what is increasingly understood to be an imminent environmental disaster.

The spill, emanating from a pipe 50 miles offshore and 5,000 feet underwater, was creeping into Louisiana’s fragile coastal wetlands as strong winds and rough waters hampered cleanup efforts. Officials said the oil could hit the shores of Mississippi and Alabama as soon as Monday.

The White House announced that President Obama would visit the region on Sunday morning.

Read the full New York Times story here.

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An oil spill that threatened to eclipse even the Exxon Valdez disaster spread out of control and started washing ashore along the Gulf Coast as fishermen rushed to scoop up shrimp and crews spread floating barriers around marshes.

The spill was bigger than imagined — five times more than first estimated — and closer. Fingers of oily sheen were reaching the Mississippi River delta, lapping the Louisiana shoreline in long, thin lines.

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Teams of lawyers from around the nation are mobilizing for legal battles over the massive Gulf Coast oil spill, filing at least 26 potential class action lawsuits.

Attorneys say there could be hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs from Texas to Florida seeking damages. Plaintiffs so far include commercial fishermen, charter boat captains, resort management companies and individual property owners.

Plaintiffs in class-action cases seek to represent an entire group of people in similar situations who claim economic losses due to company negligence.

The lawsuits target BP PLC, Transocean and other companies involved in the offshore rig that exploded in the Gulf and began leaking oil.

Read the full AP story here.

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Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who directed relief efforts in the gulf after Katrina, says that it’s impossible to estimate the size of the oil slick and that his priority is on stopping its spread.

The new top commander heading the fight against a massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico said on Saturday that it was impossible to estimate the size of the leak pouring into the water.

Allen’s comments come as academics and consultants say the size of the leak is growing and is perhaps three times larger than previously thought. The amount of oil leaked may already be about 10 million gallons and growing. By comparison, the Exxon Valdez spill was about 11 million gallons.

Read the full story here at the Los Angeles Times

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As a personal injury attorney, medical doctor and concerned environmentalist I have decided to team up with my very good friend, Spencer Aronfeld of the Aronfeld Law Firm. Today we are going to the Gulf Coast to assess for ourselves first hand the impact of this environmental catastrophe.

What will follow over the next few days will be dispatches from the front lines; first hand cataloging of the damage. We are hopeful that with pictures and video of the devastating damage we can start a discussion and have people think about the downside of oil.

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Driven deep into Gulf Coast waterways by wind and seasonally high tides, the spreading oil slick from the Deepwater Horizon accident could cause serious ecological and wildlife-health consequences long after signs of surface damage have been erased.

Independent studies of several major oil spills, including the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident, show that oil often reaches farther into tidal estuaries than previously thought and can soak into shoreline sediment where it can continue to affect fish and wildlife for 10 or 20 years.

In the aftermath of offshore oil spills in Alaska, Massachusetts and Spain, researchers discovered long-term effects on shellfish, crabs, seabirds, whales and sea otters years after the accidents. The problems ranged from altered blood chemistry and higher levels of stress hormones to erratic behavior, contaminated eggs and long-term population declines.

Read the full story here at the Wall Street Journal

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Frank Campo thinks the oil spill approaching the marshes east of New Orleans may destroy his community.

Campo, who runs Campo’s Marina in St. Bernard Parish’s Shell Beach, says the response to the spill is too little and too late to prevent economic disaster for the commercial and recreational fishermen who earn a living from the coast.

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

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We blogged on Thursday about the initial lawsuits getting filed over the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Those suits, however, are likely to turn out to represent just the tip of the iceberg in regard to the legal trouble likely facing a host of defendants, including BP, Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling, and others.

Read the full WSJ story here.

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As oil edged toward the Louisiana coast, fears continued to grow that the leak from the seabed oil well could spiral out of control. One official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the oil flow could grow from the current estimate of 5,000 barrels a day to “an order of magnitude higher than that.”
BP officials said they did everything possible, and a review of the response suggests it may be too simplistic to place all the blame on the oil company. The federal government also had opportunities to move more quickly, but did not do so while it waited for a resolution to the spreading spill from BP, which was leasing the drilling rig that exploded in flames on April 20 and sank two days later. Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead.

Read the full New York Times.

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BP PLC said Friday that it would honor all “legitimate claims” for damages stemming from the Louisiana oil spill, as the company’s stock continued to fall amid investors’ concerns about potential litigation and a total clean-up bill that could run well into the billions of dollars.

The disaster was set in motion when the Deepwater Horizon, which had been leased by BP to drill a well in the Gulf of Mexico, caught fire and sank, killing 11 crew members. BP’s efforts to stop the flow of oil from the well have failed.

The company is spending about $6 million a day on the clean-up, but those costs are expected to escalate with the oil making landfall. Analyst estimates of BP’s total costs stemming from the disaster range from around $2.5 billion to $8 billion. BP says it is self-insured.

Read the full Wall Street Article Here.

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