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In paragraph 9, Dr. Jeff Kalina affirms that “Petroleum has...
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Experts Try to Gauge Health Effects of Gulf Oil Spill
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
WEDNESDAY, June 23 (HealthDay News) - This
Tuesday and Wednesday, a high-ranking group of
expert government advisors is meeting to outline and
anticipate potential health risks from the Gulf oil spill -
5 and find ways to minimize them.
The workshop, convened by the Institute of
Medicine (IOM) at the request of the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, will not issue any
formal recommendations, but is intended to spur
10 debate on the ongoing spill.
“We know that there are several contaminations.
We know that there are several groups of people —
workers, volunteers, people living in the area,” said
Dr. Maureen Lichtveld, a panel member and professor
15 and chair of the department of environmental health
sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health
and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. “We’re going
to discuss what the opportunities are for exposure and
what the potential short- and long-term health effects
20 are. That’s the essence of the workshop, to look at
what we know and what are the gaps in science,”
Lichtveld explained.
High on the agenda: discussions of who is most
at risk from the oil spill, which started when BP’s
25 Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in the Gulf
of Mexico on April 20, killing 11 workers. The spill has
already greatly outdistanced the 1989 Exxon Valdez
spill in magnitude.
“Volunteers will be at the highest risk,” one panel
30 member, Paul Lioy of the University of Medicine &
Dentistry of New Jersey and Rutgers University,
stated at the conference. He was referring largely to
the 17,000 U.S. National Guard members who are
being deployed to help with the clean-up effort.
35 Many lack extensive training in the types of
hazards — chemical and otherwise — that they’ll be
facing, he said. That might even include the poisonous
snakes that inhabit coastal swamps, Lioy noted. Many
National Guard members are “not professionally
40 trained. They may be lawyers, accountants, your
next-door neighbor,” he pointed out.
Seamen and rescue workers, residents living
in close proximity to the disaster, people eating fish
and seafood, tourists and beach-goers will also face
45 some risk going forward, Dr. Nalini Sathiakumar, an
occupational epidemiologist and pediatrician at the
University of Alabama at Birmingham, added during
the conference.
Many of the ailments, including nausea, headache
50 and dizziness, are already evident, especially in
clean-up workers, some of whom have had to be
hospitalized.
“Petroleum has inherent hazards and I would
say the people at greatest risk are the ones actively
55 working in the region right now,” added Dr. Jeff
Kalina, associate medical director of the emergency
department at The Methodist Hospital in Houston. “If
petroleum gets into the lungs, it can cause quite a bit
of damage to the lungs [including] pneumonitis, or
60 inflammation of the lungs.”
“There are concerns for workers near the source.
They do have protective equipment on but do they
need respirators?” added Robert Emery, vice president
for safety, health, environment and risk management
65 at the University of Texas Health Science Center at
Houston.
Physical contact with volatile organic compounds
(VOCs) and with solvents can cause skin problems
as well as eye irritation, said Sathiakumar, who noted
70 that VOCs can also cause neurological symptoms
such as confusion and weakness of the extremities.
“Some of the risks are quite apparent and some
we don’t know about yet,” said Kalina. “We don’t know
what’s going to happen six months or a year from
75 now.”
Copyright (c) 2010 HealthDay. All rights reserved. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_100305.html, retrieved on September 9th, 2010.
In paragraph 9, Dr. Jeff Kalina affirms that “Petroleum has inherent hazards...” (line 53) because he feels that
A
it is neurologically harmful for the family of workers in oil rigs.
B
the health risks associated with oil prospection are completely unpredictable.
C
the damages it causes on the environment are intrinsic to the way oil is being explored.
D
direct exposure to the chemicals it contains can cause different kinds of health disorders.
E
all of the risks associated with the oil production are known but are not made public.