The GuLF Study, or Gulf Long-term Follow-up Study, is a five-year research project examining the human-health consequences of the ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill in April 2010. The spill followed an explosion on a

drilling rig A drilling rig is an integrated system that drills wells, such as oil or water wells, or holes for piling and other construction purposes, into the earth's subsurface. Drilling rigs can be massive structures housing equipment used to drill wat ...

leased by BP, the British oil company, and led to the release of over four million

barrels A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, u ...

of oil into the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

, 48 miles off the coast of

Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...

in the United States. The study was set up in June that year by the United States

Department of Health and Human Services The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is " ...

. It is being conducted by the

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) conducts research into the effects of the environment on human disease, as one of the 27 institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is located in the Rese ...

(NIEHS), part of the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

, and aims to recruit 55,000 of the 150,000 workers who volunteered or were employed to help clean up the spill. It is led by

Dale Sandler Dale Pearlman Sandler is an American epidemiologist specialized in prospective cohort studies designed to study the impact of environmental exposures on population health. She is chief of the Epidemiology Branch at the National Institute of Envi ...

, head of the NIEHS's

epidemiology Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidenc ...

branch.Charles W. Schmidt
"Study to Examine Health Effects in "Deepwater Horizon" Oil Spill Cleanup workers"
''Environmental Health Perspectives'', 119(5), May 2011.

''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill

The ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill was the world's largest accidental marine oil spill. It began on April 20, 2010, after an explosion on the ''

Deepwater Horizon ''Deepwater Horizon'' was an ultra-deepwater, dynamically positioned, semi-submersible offshore drilling rig owned by Transocean and operated by BP. On 20 April 2010, while drilling at the Macondo Prospect, a blowout caused an explosion on ...

'', a drilling rig leased by BP to drill an exploratory well. Between then and July 15, when the well was capped, over four million barrels of oil (around 170 million US gallons, or 643 million litres) spilled from a depth of 5,000 ft (1,500 m) into the Gulf of Mexico, 48 miles off the coast of Louisiana."U.S. Scientific Teams Refine Estimates of Oil Flow from BP's Well Prior to Capping"
Deepwater Horizon Unified Command, August 2, 2010: "Overall, the scientific teams estimate that approximately 4.9 million barrels of oil have been released from the well. Not all of this oil and gas flowed into the ocean; containment activities conducted by BP under U.S. direction captured approximately 800,000 barrels of oil prior to the capping of the well." *Harry R. Weber
"BP seeks to spread blame as first phase of spill trial ends"
''Houston Chronicle'', April 17, 2013: "The government once estimated the spill was 4.9 million barrels, but agreed this year to lower that to 4.1 million barrels, about 172 million gallons. BP has disputed the government estimates." According to the GuLF Study, the duration of the spill, the area affected, the proximity to local communities, and the number of people involved in the clean-up, were all greater than in any other spill that has been studied. Around 180 miles of shoreline were "heavily to moderately oiled," according to a US government report. Additional safety concerns were raised by the use of roughly nine million litres of

oil dispersants An oil dispersant is a mixture of emulsifiers and solvents that helps break oil into small droplets following an oil spill. Small droplets are easier to disperse throughout a water volume, and small droplets may be more readily biodegraded by mi ...

Corexit Corexit (often styled COREXIT) is a product line of oil dispersants used during oil spill response operations. It is produced by Nalco Holding Company, an indirect subsidiary of Ecolab. Corexit was originally developed by the Standard Oil Compa ...

9527 and 9500, during the clean-up operation. It was the largest known application of such dispersants to date, and the first use of dispersants at that depth.

Study details

Background and funding

Following the spill, there were anecdotal reports of health problems among workers involved in the clean-up, who complained of a variety of issues, including flu-like symptoms, rashes and stress. The Institute of Medicine held a workshop in June 2010, "Assessing the Human Health Effects of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill," and recommended that the United States government set up a study.Sara Reardon
"Ten Months After Deepwater Horizon, Picking Up the Remnants of Health Data"
''Science'', 331(6022), March 11, 2011, p. 1252. The Department of Health and Human Services agreed that month to set it up. The study was launched in September 2010, and in February 2011 the first mailing requests were sent out to potential participants. The study is expected to cost $34 million over five years, and has been designed so that it can continue for up to 20 years. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) contributed $10 million to fund the initial phases, and BP contributed an additional $10 million to NIH for this and other projects. The BP funding was made through its Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GRI), a ten-year program to study the effects of the spill.

Focus

Deepwater Horizon oil spill fishing closure map 2010-06-21

The areas affected are

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

and

Mississippi Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...

."U.S. to study health impact of BP oil spill"
Reuters, March 1, 2011. The study aims to track 55,000 workers for at least five years. The workers will have been involved in a variety of tasks, such as oil burning, skimming, booming, as well as cleaning up animals, equipment and the shoreline, resulting in different levels of exposure to contaminants. The study has also recruited, as a control group, workers who completed the clean-up safety training, but who in the end did not take part in the clean-up itself. The researchers will examine the workers' exposure to

volatile organic compound Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic compounds that have a high vapour pressure at room temperature. High vapor pressure correlates with a low boiling point, which relates to the number of the sample's molecules in the surrounding air, a ...

s (VOCs),

polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon A polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) is a class of organic compounds that is composed of multiple aromatic rings. The simplest representative is naphthalene, having two aromatic rings and the three-ring compounds anthracene and phenanthrene. ...

s (PAHs) and dispersants, using monitoring data gathered during the clean-up. Around 20,000 of the workers will be visited at home, and blood, hair, urine and toenail samples will be collected to look for

biomarkers In biomedical contexts, a biomarker, or biological marker, is a measurable indicator of some biological state or condition. Biomarkers are often measured and evaluated using blood, urine, or soft tissues to examine normal biological processes, p ...

, such as

DNA adduct In molecular genetics, a DNA adduct is a segment of DNA bound to a cancer-causing chemical. This process could lead to the development of cancerous cells, or carcinogenesis. DNA adducts in scientific experiments are used as biomarkers of exposur ...

s and

chromosome A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...

damage; lung-function tests will be carried out, and dust samples will be collected from their homes. Researchers will look for respiratory conditions, cancers,

hematological Hematology ( always spelled haematology in British English) is the branch of medicine concerned with the study of the cause, prognosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases related to blood. It involves treating diseases that affect the produc ...

outcomes, and neuro-behavioral or mental-health problems, and for any job losses, and financial or domestic disruption, the spill may have caused."7 Sep 2010: NIH to Launch Gulf Oil Spill Health Study"
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, September 7, 2010. Questionnaires ask workers about their health at the time of the spill, exposure to oil or dispersant, and lifestyle factors that, as the study said, "might confound associations between exposures and health.""The GuLF STUDY"
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, accessed July 9, 2013. By January 2013 researchers had conducted 32,000 telephone interviews, including 800 interviews in Spanish and over 1,000 in Vietnamese, and 9,967 home visits.Mark Schleifstein

''The Times-Picayune'', January 22, 2013.

Obstacles and concerns

The difficulties facing the study are considerable. Sara Reardon wrote in ''Science'' in March 2011 that scientists were concerned that they did not know what to look for. The delay between the workers' exposure in 2010 and the start of the study – the first interviews of participants took place in February 2011Susan Buchanan
"BP spill workers seek care as health study progresses"
''The Louisiana Weekly'', November 21, 2011. – meant that short-term physical markers that could be directly related to the spill, such as rashes, had gone. There is also little information about the pre-spill baseline health of the workers, whose work involves regular exposure to environmental hazards. According to epidemiologist Maureen Lichtveld, the main health effects are likely to be psychosocial, such as depression and increased alcohol use resulting from job losses. Reardon wrote that, given how economically depressed the community is, it will be difficult to demonstrate what is causing the stress-related illnesses the workers report. There has been concern that the study will collect health information without addressing the medical needs of the workers, who may have no

health insurance Health insurance or medical insurance (also known as medical aid in South Africa) is a type of insurance that covers the whole or a part of the risk of a person incurring medical expenses. As with other types of insurance, risk is shared among ma ...

. The study's lead investigator, Dale Sandler, said in 2011 that participants who are found by the researchers to need medical care will be referred to local health-care providers who offer free or reduced-cost treatment. Local people say that finding such medical care is not easy, and that the workers' health should be prioritized over data collection.

''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill

Study details

Background and funding

Focus

Obstacles and concerns

Notes

Further reading