WORKERS SAFETY HEALTHDURING IGUASSU OIL SPILL RESPONSEOIL SPILL IN IGUASSU RIVER – ARAUCARIA, PARANA, BRAZIL

摘要

On July 16, 2000 a major oil spill occurred at theside of the Araucaria refinery. A total of 4,000 m3 of a light crudeoil run down around two kilometers trough Saldanha creek,crossing and contaminating four wetlands. The oil dischargedinto Barigüi River, a tributary of Iguassu River contaminating 6kilometers in Barigüi River and 60 in Iguassu River. An oilrecovery and cleanup operation was mounted. Almost 3000workers were hired in haste to clean and recover oil in theimpacted wetlands area, as well as in the water streams. Theaccident happened on a Sunday afternoon, during one of thecoldest (for Brazilian standards) winters in past years, withtemperatures as low as – 6 °C. At the start of the oil recoverywork, a very important issue was worker's safety and health.Most of the workers were unskilled people, unemployed until theaccident and among them a great number of illiterate persons.The paper describes the issues with regards to safety and health,the actions taken to protect worker's health during manual oilrecovery in wetlands, the means used to reduce hydrocarbonvapor exposure and evaluation of worker's exposure tohydrocarbon vapors. The effort was successful, in nine days allthe free oil was removed from the rivers. The cleaning of theriverbanks and inundation areas was completed in three months.The creek and wetland areas ascending Barigüi River heldaround 70 per cent of the spilled oil. In these areas the safety andhealth concerns where higher. All superficial oil was removedfrom the rivers and streams.