Oil the health risks

The word “spill” hardly seems adequate to describe the incursion of oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the breakdown and leak of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

It is estimated by experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States that around 3 million litres of oil are leaking daily. Based on this, as of time of writing (14th July) the amount of oil leaked into the waters of the Gulf has been around 250 million litres. These figures so exceed the imagination that they become meaningless except that they do have very real meaning for the environment and for personal health.

As attempts have been made to cap the leaking rig the main method of dealing with the disaster has been the use of dispersants. Essentially these dispersants do just what their name says which is to break the oil up into smaller droplets. These droplets can then be consumed by microbes which could not deal with the larger volumes of oil.

What this dispersal process is doing though is really shifting the problem. By breaking the oil down we do not see as much horrific vision of oil smeared birds and sealife. However, most experts agree that the problem is just shifted to other parts of the ocean. Presumably the oil that has been consumed by microbes enters the food chain and impacts creatures and ecosystems less obviously in view.

As oil presumed to have come from the Deepwater Horizon washes onto to the Texas coastline the environmental implications of this unprecedented event are impossible to calculate. Equally there will be Health effects on humans and these effects are trying to be calculated as you read this.

For the workers involved in the cleanup there are risks associated with inhalation of volatile organic compounds from oil like benzene. Lower respiratory tract problems are to be expected. There are also concerns for neurological effects on children and developing foetuses. Researchers have also reported a link between exposure to oil spills and DNA damage.

Researchers from the University of A Coruna in Spain have studied workers who dealt with the oil spill resulting when the tanker Prestige leaked thousands of litres of oil into the Spanish and French coasts in 2002. It was found that workers who were exposed to oil for just five days did show DNA damage but that the damage repaired itself. In workers exposed for months however the DNA damage became fixed.

This does not mean that those workers exposed to the oil for long periods will develop cancer but they are at higher risk, just as are people who smoke or live in highly polluted cities. It also means that health authorities need to monitor the health of the population in this area since the scale of environmental event here means that we are in uncharted water.

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