NIH Begins Study of Oil Spill's Impact on Residents

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[Feb. 28, 2011] The U.S. government launched what's being billed as the largest study ever conducted of how an oil spill affects human health. The Gulf Long-Term Follow-Up Study will survey Gulf of Mexico residents who helped with the cleanup of last year's Deepwater Horizon oil spill and follow them for at least 5 years.

Today, the U.S. government launched what's being billed as the largest study ever conducted of how an oil spill affects human health. The Gulf Long-Term Follow-Up Study will survey Gulf of Mexico residents who helped with the cleanup of last year's Deepwater Horizon oil spill and follow them for at least 5 years.

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The $19 million study by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) will contact people known to have been involved in the gulf cleanup efforts and ask them to undergo physical examinations and fill out questionnaires about their health. This direct approach will be more encompassing than simply relying on extant medical records, principal investigator Dale Sandler, head of the epidemiology branch at NIEHS, explained at a teleconference today. "People might not be complaining, they might just feel lousy and not report it," she says.

The study team plans to contact 100,000 people with the goal of enrolling 55,000 in the study. The first letters will go out today, and efforts will ramp up in April. The questionnaire and findings will also be accessible on the study's Web site. "We're trying to set an example for doing research in daylight," Sandler said.

The National Institutes of Health will put up about $19 million, including $8 million from a special fund for crosscutting initiatives managed by NIH Director Francis Collins, and $6 million from BP, which played no part in the study's design and will not be involved in analyzing the results.

Article continues: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/02/nih-begins-study-of-oil-spills.html?rss=1