NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Environmental groups and women from Alaska and Louisiana are asking a federal court to make the Environmental Protection Agency set new rules for use of oil spill dispersants, citing worries about the chemicals’ health and environmental effects.
“We want our foods to come to us. What’s going to happen to them if they come through these areas where dispersants are used?” said Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, who lives in a village on the Arctic Ocean, in a telephone interview. She’s a plaintiff in the lawsuit filed Thursday afternoon in federal court in Washington, D.C.
An EPA spokeswoman in Washington, Maggie Sauerhage, said she was checking on the lawsuit.
Ahtuangaruak said people in her indigenous community depend on oily fish and fatty marine mammals for the energy they need to survive in an area where temperatures are often far below zero degrees Fahrenheit (-18 Celsius).
Ahtuangaruak said she began investigating dispersants after working as a health aide in Utqiagvik, formerly Barrow, following the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. The hospital treated some people who had applied dispersant and blamed it for symptoms ranging from respiratory and skin disorders to fatigue and foggy thinking, she said.