Page 13 - Cleanup Workers News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> reporter: silently poisoned. >> and that's what's happening to those people in the gulf. >> now, john and kate, bp and the federal officials insist that is not going to happen down in the gulf. that they are monitoring the air there. but a congressional committee is now getting involved in this. the house energy and commerce committee which has been holding hearings on bp now has sent a letter to exxonmobil, asking exxonmobil to dig boo its files from 1989 and fork over any health records it has on the cleanup workers and how they may have been exposed to dangerous chemicals or if indeed al...

Refusing to do that. the next day, they began to turn overall of this information and there was, as a result, an increase in the transparency. but i think we're going to have to monitor this situation on an ongoing basis because nobody knows better than you, there are physical harms here, but there are also mental health consequences to this event because people's lives are being affected in a way that could change the whole course of family's histories. >> it really is remarkable. being down here, congressman, for the reasons you just mentioned. that's exactly what we'll be talking about toda...

>> alaska attorney dennis mestis represented one of the few workers who did sue, but in the process found out that hundreds of workers involved in the cleanup had fallen sick. >> and you found all of this out years later, based on -- >> on one worker that i represented. >> who is still sick? >> who is still sick to this day. even exxon was forced to concede, eventually, that gary stum pch stubblefield, was a very sick man. >> he traveled from alaska to an exxon office in houston where stubblefield's medical records and thousands of others were being held, records exxon asked a court to seal fo...

>> it's amazing, nowhere near the monitoring that's going on now. certainly no follow-up whatsoever. i got a statement from exxonmobil last night said, hey, the lack of studies is due largely to the fact that the cleanup workers tend to be transient workers making any follow-up incredibly difficult. does that sound like what's going on today? >> yeah, pretty much. drew griffith with that story. thanks very much. potentially good news coming from the gulf. bp is saying in a perfect world, it's possible that the relief well could be scheduled ahead of schedule. it coincides with the big events...

They get sick while their medical records are controlled by bp. louisiana's health department has reported 128 cleanup workers believed to be sick from exposure to this spill but bp tells us they have recorded just five illnesses related to inhalation exposures in the entire gulf. bp is also insisting that government air testing is showing, quote, we have not had a single reading above osha regulations to date. as for respirators, the company says there has been no demonstrated need for them, no single issue high enough to warrant a respirator. >> anything that i -- >> dr. rickie ott studied t...