According to Mike Pappantonio, who appeared on the Thom Hartmann radio show today, June 2nd, said the workers in the Gulf of Mexico are getting seriously ill due to the use of dispersants. BP does not want to admit it, but scientists and the MSDS fact sheet  on Corexit (material safety data sheet) said that the use of Corexit can cause a person to suffer from “incurable flu-like” symptoms, including diffused muscle pain, nosebleeds and breathing problems. The MSDS says people who work with Corexit need respirators because being around it can lead to organ damage, especially of the kidneys, liver and lungs.   BP is playing down the bad effects of their dispersant, but Corexit can cause very serious health effects in people besides organ damage, including altering a person’s DNA. This is according to Mike Pappantonio, the MSDS sheet for Corexit, and Dr. Ricki Ott, who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill aftermath.    BP has been firing people who even brought in their own respirators because they didn’t like the way it looked.  From EDF:

Writing in the Huffington Post, Dr. Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist who worked on environmental remediation after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, noted that some of the first responders to the Deepwater Horizon disaster “are getting sick from…working on the cleanup”. Boom installers and other temporary workers have complained of nausea and bad headaches (conditions that might be linked with overexposure to 2-butoxyethanol, a major component of one of the COREXIT chemicals).

Mike Pappantonio also confirmed that President Obama (via the Secretary of Labor) has suspended the Davis-Bacon act and now BP is importing workers from Mexico to work on the clean up with inadequate safety gear and paying them slave wages.  This is something George Bush did after Hurricane Katrina and he was highly criticized for it. It basically means that people can be hired by BP and work for less than minimum wage, and BP has no legal safety responsibilities towards people that come from other countries and work in the U.S.

Streaks left by oil that retreated during low tide are visible on a public beach on June 2, 2010, in Dauphin Island, Ala. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

And here are some Dick Cheney ties to this mess from Pro Publica:

“In a speech last week on the disaster unfolding in the Gulf, President Obama told the nation that for decades, there existed a “scandalously close relationship between oil companies and the agency that regulates them,” and that he took responsibility for a culture that had “not fully changed” under his administration.

On that subject—the culture of coziness between the Minerals Management Service and industry—a non-profit Wyoming news service WyoFile published a report today that details some of the ties between MMS internal culture, the state of Wyoming, and the state’s native son, Dick Cheney. From WyoFile:

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