While oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill may have stopped gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, experts are far from finished working to anticipate, outline and minimize the disaster's potential health risks, says a University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health researcher actively involved in helping the federal government deal with repercussions from the April 20 accident.
Nalini Sathiakumar, M.D., Dr.P.H., an associate professor in UAB's Department of Epidemiology and a pediatric nephrologist, is part of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ad-hoc team formed in July that is in discussions to plan and execute research strategies surrounding health outcomes due to the oil spill.
The Gulf leak was the equivalent of a supertanker spill every week, says Sathiakumar, who was part of an Institute of Medicine panel of health experts who met in New Orleans in June to discuss repercussions from the oil-rig accident.
"This already is an unprecedented tragedy," she says. "We need to move quickly to monitor and study the physical and psychological impacts in the short term and long term among clean-up workers, volunteers and in adults and children, and we need to follow these with long-term studies."
While some of the short-term health effects are known - watery and irritated eyes, skin itching and redness, coughing and shortness or breath or wheezing - there also are many unknown health effects, says Sathiakumar, who has researched a prior oil spill. Even tourists, beach-goers and seafood lovers will face some risks going forward, she says.