Long-Term Health Effects of BP Gulf Oil Spill Tough to Predict

[jpak]

http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/08/16/long-term-health-effects-of-bp-gulf-oil-spill-tough-to-predict/

Thankfully, massive oil spills don’t happen very often. But that means there’s a lack of data on the long-term health effects of such disasters, making it tough to predict with any certainty what the Gulf of Mexico oil spill’s ultimate impact on human health will be.

According to commentary by two scientists published online today in JAMA, the potential problems include direct health threats from breathing or coming into contact with oil and chemicals as well as a more indirect toll on mental health and on the safety of seafood. Authors Gina Solomon and Sarah Janssen, both associated with the University of California, San Francisco and the National Resources Defense Council, advise physicians and other health-care providers to question patients with symptoms about “occupational exposures and location of residence,” focusing on the skin, respiratory tract and neurological system.

Preventing illness is pretty common-sensical: cleanup workers need proper equipment and community members shouldn’t fish where they’ve been told not to, or eat or sell fish that smells like oil (we’d hope no one would need to be told that). Also, avoid direct skin contact with contaminated water, oil or tar balls, and if you smell oil or chemicals, go inside or to a better source of air.

There may also be a long-term effect on community members’ mental health due to personal and financial stress, judging from what was reported following the Exxon Valdez and other spills. A survey conducted a year after the Valdez spill “found that exposed individuals were 3.6 times more likely to have anxiety disorder, 2.9 times more likely to have posttraumatic stress disorder, and 2.1 times more likely to score high on a depression index,” the authors write. And “adverse mental health effects were observed up to 6 years after the oil spill.”

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