Eight Years Later, BP Oil Spill Clean-Up Workers Await Their Day In Court As Medical Questions Linger

Walter Castro spent months after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in 2010 measuring air quality along beaches across the Gulf Coast, a task that regularly led him to inhale fumes that reeked of chemicals as he put in long days for weeks at a time. The 52-year-old Metairie resident claims that contaminated water splashed into his face, exposing him to oil and chemical dispersants that irritated his skin and burned his eyes. On one monitoring mission, he says, he got sick and began shaking violently, and so did the rest of his boat crew. Castro says in court filings that he requested personal protective equipment, including respirators, but was turned down, and yet was instructed to return to areas where he had measured high levels of benzene, a known carcinogen.