(WRITTEN 2011)
(UNEDITED, UNABRIDGED)
OIL COLLATERAL DAMAGE
How usual is it that we see regularly humans dying in the pursuit of doing a job! The resent disaster of BP in the Gulf Oil spill is but one of a litany of such deaths. When working in a chemical industry it is amazing to find that in the production of a compound the company plans for an acceptable expenditure for possible/probable deaths. If this expenditure is a small percentage of the expected profit the process goes forward with any consideration for improvement to diminish the deaths of the workers. (Oil Industry Deaths Common in U.S., National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, August 05, 2010)
In the mining industry (i. g. coal, gold, diamond, etc.) the coal workers are considered expendable and the coal reigns as king! The coal workers are trapped into accepting the dangers of under ground mining by the abject poverty under which their family has to live. It is reported that at the peak time (1805-1910) over 100,000 mine workers died world wide. It is possible to make this industry much more safe but the expenditure is far more than the deaths and suits of the dead workers. (Brenda Wilson, The Quiet Deaths Outside The Coal Mines)
In the oil industry, safety takes a back seat to the margin of profit if the safety feathers cost hurts changes the bottom line. The oil and gas industry is a real killer. Its fatality rate (30.0 per 100,000 workers) is eight times higher than the average rate for all American workers! Although the deaths in the oil industry are deliberately under reported, a total of 120 fatal work injuries occurred in the oil and gas extraction industry in 2008. (BETSY BLANEY, There has been blood: Death rate among oil workers alarmingly, Lubbock Avalanch-Journal, September 15, 2008) The three most frequent fatal events in 2008 were transportation incidents (41 percent), contact with objects and equipment (25 percent), and fires and explosions (15 percent). No deaths from long term poisoning were reported. The number of fatal work injuries associated with fires and explosions over the past five years ranged from 10 fatalities in 2007 to 21 fatalities in 2006. In 2008, there were 18 fatalities. However, its pay of suits for harm is less than one-hundredth of the profit of the industry! (Linda Keenan and Janine R. Wedel, Shadow Elite: Think BP's The Bad Guy? Think Bigger, Way Bigger, Huffman Post, Posted: May 13, 2010)
Agriculture could change the use of it’s poisons to save the health and lives of it’s workers but the changes would make a dent in it’s bottom line. Therefore, migrant workers are regularly sprayed with poisonous pesticides and herbicides that make them ill and affect the life span of them and their children. As a chemist you would recall the time wham barrels of livers and other organs would come to the lab for chemical residue analysis and they were not always organs of animals (human organs)! (Crystal Gammon, Weed-Whacking Herbicide Proves Deadly to Human Cells Environmental Health News, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, June 23, 2009)
As an important note it must be recalled that the Tobacco industry kills about 200,000 people per year!
All industries are guilty of participating in this “Culture of Acceptable Collateral Damage (deaths)” in doing business! As a matter of fact the American worker has been conditioned to expect and accept that they have to work in a job where their lives are in real danger. This conditioning has been spread to many other areas such as boxing, football, baseball, auto racing. Etc.. All this is enough to terrorize any citizen! This is place where government must step in and protect the population. Here again America has the wisdom and must find the well for the of, by, and for the people Constitution mandates.
Dr. J. Alva Scruggs, BS, MS, MA, EdD
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