The long table at the back of Wilma Subra's office in rural Louisiana is covered with stacks of paper, several of which look in danger of sliding into a heap on the floor. There are legal briefs, chemical lab reports and government memos. But if Subra had to sum up each stack in a single phrase, it might come down to this: public good versus toxic industry.
The paperwork generated by the oil spill catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is beginning entirely to take over another whole room.
Subra's phone began ringing the morning after the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon, with calls from friends and neighbours who had men on the rig. More calls came in when the southerly winds coming off the Gulf brought headaches, nausea and breathing difficulties to people on the coast. These days, the phone rings constantly.
"I've gotten 300 to 400 complaints," she said, ticking off the names of Louisiana's coastal localities on her fingers. "Headaches, dizziness, stinging eyes, some chest pains … They come in at night very sick, but they need that job, so they go out again the next morning."
Subra began making space for another towering stack of papers. Over the past 30 years, the chemist has used her expertise on dozens of occasions to defend local communities against Louisiana's powerful oil and gas industry.
The potential danger to human health from the millions of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf for the last two months is only just beginning to command public attention.
Members of Congress pressed BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, last week on reports that hundreds of workers had fallen sick from oil fumes, and asked if the company was prepared to pay their long-term health costs. Hayward said it was up to the independent manager of the $20bn (£13.5bn) claims fund.
Subra was already on the case. She and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network have been using the courts and political connections to compel BP to provide respirators and other protective gear to workers out on the boats fighting the spill, and to protect vulnerable populations on land.
"I am not being impacted, but a lot of people are being impacted. They need help in understanding what is going on," she said.
Subra has met regularly with Obama administration officials visiting the Gulf. Earlier this month, she testified before a committee of Congress investigating the spill and its after-effects. History has shown responders to oil spills often suffer headaches and other symptoms, and in the long term are at higher risk of central nervous system damage, kidney and liver damage, and cancer.
Early reports from this spill are patchy but suggest a growing number of workers have suffered after laying booms or operating skimmers.
In addition, US worker safety regulations do not apply more than three miles offshore, leaving workers based near the ruptured well exposed.
A lesser woman might be discouraged. But such evasions are familiar to Subra after half a lifetime of doing battle with big industry. Her first big fight was in her local parish. In those days, there was so much gas leaking into aquifers that you could set tap water on fire.
She has worked on natural gas drilling in Texas and Wyoming, has helped communities living near polluted shipyards in San Francisco, and covered the potential impacts of importing Italian nuclear waste through New Orleans.
She has trained people in rural areas to monitor emissions from refineries and chemical plants, so they can sound the alarm if air quality deteriorates to dangerous levels. She encouraged them to keep logs of symptoms and report powerful odours.
"The science background was critical. Looking at all the environmental issues, you had to understand what the impact meant, and put it in terms the government agencies could respond to."
Her advocacy on environmental and health issues for local communities – fishermen, trappers, native American tribes – led CNN to call Subra another Erin Brockovich.
The comparison to Brockovich, a beauty queen turned consumer advocate who seeks the spotlight, embarrasses Subra, a soft-spoken grandmother who attends mass and wears her hair in a bun.
Brockovich spent three days in Louisiana earlier this month, looking for clients. "I was doing this long before she was around," said Subra.
She blushes when asked if she sees herself as an activist. But she said she accepts that publicity and politics are crucial to a winning cause.
She sees herself as a technocrat. "I am not the one screaming and beating my fists on the table," she said. "But I am sure a lot of the companies consider me an activist. They figure if Wilma wasn't there, the communities would not be able to represent the information."
Others employed by industry may have come to a similar conclusions. Subra said she is used to the occasional snub at church social events. And four years ago, a gunman in a passing car fired a single shot at her office. Subra moved her desk away from the window.
With this spill, she sees two clear areas of danger. On the frontline are workers out on the water, directly exposed to crude, to the toxic chemicals from the more than 1m gallons of dispersant, and to the fumes from the burning of oil carried out near the sunken rig. Then there is the general population, which is facing a lengthy exposure to tiny airborne particles of crude oil.
"A lot of people are thinking that if the well stops flowing, these issues are going away, but they are not going to go away for a very long time," she said.
And neither will the stack of papers in Subra's office.
