Gulf residents still ill from oil spill

The wife of fisherman told BP investors her community was being 'killed' in the aftermath of the BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.


Tracy Kuhns who lives with her family in a a small fishing community near to New Orleans in Louisiana spoke out as she prepared to attend MP Annual General Meeting (AGM) in London today (April 14).

Mrs Kuhns, who is a proxy shareholder in BP, said her community had been ‘inundated’ with oil and chemicals used to disperse it.

She said: “We don’t have national health care my husband pays over $500 dollars a month for private insurance … he goes to the doctors and that’s another $100 for medication.

“It costs us a fortune and our private insurance doesn’t want to foot the bill for the illness we’re seeing across the Gulf Coast from this and I don’t blame them.

“BP needs to pay human health damages so we can get diagnosed, treated and monitored.”

Mrs Kuhns said ‘a small number of claims’ had been paid but the majority had not leaving many people struggling.

She added: “We understand that BP wants to, and has to, make a profit that’s why they’re in business.

“We all have a legal and moral obligation to pay those costs – they need to make our businesses’ whole, our communities’ whole and our health care right.”

Luke Walsh

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