"Environmental activists sued EPA to update regulations, after thousands of people sickened from Deepwater Horizon cleanup".
"The Environmental Protection Agency has announced more stringent rules governing offshore oil spill response, amid continuing concerns about the effects on public health and wildlife from chemical disasters, including BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010.
The federal agency, which announced the update on Monday, had not updated its rule regulating the chemicals used to break up offshore oil slicks since 1994.
Five environmental organizations, an Alaskan tribal leader and a south Louisiana fisher sued the EPA in 2020 to force the agency to update its regulations based on lessons learned from the BP oil spill and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. In 2021, US district court judge William Orrick ordered the EPA to update its oil spill response plans.
Thousands of people who rushed into Gulf of Mexico waters to clean up BP’s oil spill have fallen ill, and some have died. A recent Guardian investigation spotlighted the difficult legal fight that cleanup workers who got sick have been experiencing trying to bring medical cases against the oil giant."
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