Labored Breathing: “BP Syndrome” and the Fallout of the <i>Deepwater Horizon</i> Oil Spill

The 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the largest commercial oil spill in marine drilling history, yet human geographers and allied fields have not attended proportionately to its aftermath. As environmental disasters intensify, revisiting this moment is urgent—especially given whistleblower claims that the remediation caused greater harm to people and planet than the spill itself. Drawing on affidavits, anonymous testimonies, and other materials, this article reconstructs BP’s cleanup operation, focusing on the decision to introduce the chemical dispersant Corexit into the Gulf, the assembly of a precarious workforce—including prisoners and out-of-work fishers—and the management of financial, reputational, and legal risk. Through an approach that traces how air was managed, modulated, and measured at the cleanup site, we establish the conditions through which workers became afflicted by what they term “BP syndrome,” a debilitating condition comprised of chronic breathlessness, cancers, and other illnesses that remains the subject of legal contestation. Our analysis sheds light on BP’s marshaling of certainty and uncertainty in defining dangerous breathing environments, identifies contingency as an area of high strategic importance for future health- and environment-based legal and policy struggles, and aims toward more just forms of environmental remediation in anticipation of future ecological disasters. We conclude by situating the experiences of the cleanup workers in historical continuity with the making and fallout of our current planetary conjuncture of fossil-fueled climate breakdown.