Oil Slick's Human Health Risks Small, but Concerns Linger

May 3, 2010— -- People living in the coastal areas near the massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico likely have little to fear in terms of health effects, environmental health specialists say -- though it is likely that the scope of the ecological disaster will still worry many.

"I think that people get afraid about health effects when these events happen, and rightfully so," said LuAnn White, director of the Center for Applied Environmental Public Health and an expert who is currently working with the Louisiana state health department to assess the effects of the spill. "But what we see from oil spills is more ecological effects than human health effects."

Still, some remain concerned over the impact that the spill could have on the safety of the seafood for which the Gulf Coast is famous.

The slick emanates from an underwater pipe fractured after a BP oil rig exploded and sunk on April 20. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that 5,000 barrels a day are leaking from the resulting wreckage, and it is now believed that the total cost of the disaster could eclipse that incurred by the Exxon Valdez tanker spill off the coast of Alaska in 1989.

It is not the first time Louisiana has encountered an oil spill; in 2005, Hurricane Katrina dislodged a 250,000-barrel storage tank near New Orleans, which subsequently released oil into several residential areas. At that time, public health experts feared that residents could be exposed to gases called volatile compounds that emanate from oil and can be toxic and cancer-causing.

White said, however, that the fact that this spill is far from shore makes it highly unlikely that those on shore will be exposed to these gases.