Oil-Cleanup Workers May Face Lung Trouble

Cleanup workers exposed to spilled oil may be at long-term risk for breathing trouble and other health problems, according to a new study examining the aftereffects of a 2002 oil spill in Spain.

However, it’s not clear whether the respiratory problems reported by the workers in the study are likely to crop up in the 50,000 people who have helped clean up the spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

“We can’t assume it’s going to be the same here as it was there,” says David Savitz, PhD, a professor of community health and ob-gyn at the Brown University School of Medicine, in Providence, R.I.

“But this shows that there is the potential for health effects that go well beyond the immediate period of exposure, and it reinforces what we’ve known before—that respiratory health effects are high on that list,” adds Dr. Savitz, who co-authored an editorial accompanying the study.

The study, which appears in the Annals of Internal Medicine, included 501 fishermen who helped clean up spilled oil after the tanker Prestige sank off the coast of Spain in November 2002. The researchers compared the workers with a similar group of 176 fishermen who did not participate in the cleanup efforts.

Two years after the accident, the fishermen who were exposed to oil were more likely to report wheezing, chronic cough, and other respiratory symptoms compared to those in the control group. The breath of the exposed fishermen also contained higher levels of chemicals associated with lung damage. (Smokers were excluded from these tests.)

In addition, the researchers found higher rates of chromosome changes in the white blood cells of the exposed fishermen—changes that have been linked to an increased risk of cancer in other studies, says Gina Solomon, MD, a senior scientist with the National Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group.

“Given these chromosomal abnormalities, I’d also worry about effects on sperm and egg cells,” says Dr. Solomon, who was not involved in the study.

The study results “indicate that participation in the cleanup of oil spills can have undesirable effects on health,” says the lead researcher, Joan Albert Barberà, MD, but he stresses that the cleanup workers in the study weren’t sick.

“No evidence was found of any active illness, only biological alterations that might predispose to develop disease,” says Dr. Barberà, a professor at the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS), in Barcelona.