scholarly journals Health effect research on Hebei Spirit Oil Spill (HEROS) in Korea: a cohort profile

BMJ Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (8) ◽  
pp. e026740 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myung Sook Park ◽  
Kyung-Hwa Choi ◽  
Seung-Hwa Lee ◽  
Jong-Il Hur ◽  
Su Ryeon Noh ◽  
...  

PurposeThe Hebei Spirit Oil Spill occurred on 7 December 2007 and resulted in the spillage of 12 547 kl of crude oil on the coastline near Taean. Historically, this was the largest oil spill in Korean water. The health effect research on Hebei Spirit Oil Spill (HEROS) is a prospective cohort study that aimed to evaluate the long-term health effects of oil spill exposure on residents in the affected community.ParticipantsThe Taean Environmental Health Center initially enrolled adults, adolescents and children living in Taean in 2009 and 2010. Follow-up surveys of participating adults and children were conducted every other year. By 2017, a total of 9585 adults and 2216 children and adolescents were enrolled. Of these, 294 adults and 102 children and adolescents were included in all subsequent surveys.Findings to dateChildren who lived closer to the oil spill site exhibited a lower level of pulmonary function and higher prevalence of allergic rhinitis, than those who lived further away from the oil spill site. Adults who lived in a highly exposed area or participated in clean-up work had higher urine levels of the oxidative stress biomarkers malondialdehyde and 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine. Changes in haematological parameters during a 3-year period were observed in residents of both sexes in highly exposed areas, in addition to increases in respiratory diseases and mental health problems in female and male participants, respectively.Future plansThe findings of this study will better enable policy makers to develop environmental health policies intended to prevent adverse health effects in residents of communities affected by oil spills, as well as policies regarding the management of future oil accidents. The HEROS study will continue to follow participants in future and will be updated to enable an investigation of long-term health effects.

Author(s):  
Xue Zhang ◽  
Suhong Zhou ◽  
Rongping Lin ◽  
Lingling Su

Environmental health effects during urbanization have attracted much attention. However, knowledge is lacking on the relationship between long-term cumulative residential environment and health effects on individuals during rapid transformations in urban physical and social space. Taking Guangzhou, China, as a case example, this study analyzed the relationship between long-term exposure to green environments and residents’ mental health under urban spatial restructuring. Based on a household survey in 2016, 820 residents who have lived in Guangzhou for more than 15 years were used as the sample. High-resolution remote sensing images were used to assess the long-term green exposure of residents. The results indicate that long-term green exposure in residential areas had a negative correlation with residents’ mental health (p < 0.05), and the correlation was strongest for the cumulative green environment in the last five years. However, this significant effect was moderated by income and residential location. Green exposure had a positive relationship with mental health for low income groups, and a negative relationship for middle and high income groups. In addition, residents living farther away from the city center were likely to have fewer green environmental health benefits. Residential relocation in a rapidly urbanizing and transforming China has led to the continuous differentiation of residential green environments among different income groups, which has also caused different mental health effects from green exposure. It provides empirical evidence and theoretical support for policymakers to improve the urban environment and reduce environmental health disparities by considering social differences and residential location.


2003 ◽  
Vol 2003 (1) ◽  
pp. 1035-1037 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kirwan John Short

ABSTRACT On the 18th January 2000 a broken pipeline owned and operated by the oil company Petrobras spilt some 1300 tonne of bunker fuel into Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro. The wildlife response was divided amongst 2 operational strategies and included – avian fauna and cetaceans. This paper deals with the cetacean response only. Cetaceans are generally not considered as an important feature of an oil spill response. Contingency planning for cetaceans in oil spills is now becoming an important element for preparedness for some countries. The cetacean response in Guanabara Bay specifically targeted a pod of about 70 members of the species Sotalia fluviatilis, a small dolphin that inhabits the bay. The response included the development of a plan that included a response system, a monitoring program and action plans. The response system detailed the mechanism for the plan to work and adopted the incident control management system. The monitoring program related to the study of any short term or long term deleterious effects resulting from the spill and consisted of basic spatial, temporal and behavioural studies. Action plans were developed specific to the character of Guanabara Bay and included the rescue and rehabilitation strategies necessary to respond to oil affected cetaceans. A training program was then developed and implemented to personnel who were to enact the cetacean response.


2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Diaz, MD, MPH, DrPH, FACOEM, FACMT

Objectives: To describe the acute health impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Louisiana as compared with the acute health impacts reported from prior crude oil spills. To predict potential chronic health impacts in Louisiana as compared with the chronic health impacts reported from prior crude oil spills.Setting: Offshore and onshore coastal southeastern Louisiana.Patients and participants: Oil spill offshore and onshore cleanup workers and the general population of coastal southeastern Louisiana.Interventions: Not applicable to an observational study.Main outcome measures: Adverse acute health effects of petrochemical and dispersant exposures in highly exposed offshore and onshore cleanup workers and the general population; prior chronic adverse health effects reported from prior oil spills; and predicted chronic adverse health effects based on intensity of chemical exposures and on seroprevalences of genetic polymorphisms.Results: Acute health effects in cleanup workers mirrored those reported in cleanup workers following prior oil spills as ranked by systems (and by symptoms). Acute health effects in lesser exposed members of the general population mirrored those reported in similar coastal residents following prior oil spills but differed from cleanup workers as ranked by systems (and symptoms).Conclusions: Subpopulations of cleanup workers and the general population with specific conditions or genetic polymorphisms in enzyme systems that detoxify polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in petrochemicals and glycols in dispersants will require long-term surveillance for chronic adverse health effects including cancer, liver and kidney diseases, mental health disorders, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Zongchen Jiang ◽  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Yi Ma ◽  
Xingpeng Mao

Marine oil spills can damage marine ecosystems, economic development, and human health. It is important to accurately identify the type of oil spills and detect the thickness of oil films on the sea surface to obtain the amount of oil spill for on-site emergency responses and scientific decision-making. Optical remote sensing is an important method for marine oil-spill detection and identification. In this study, hyperspectral images of five types of oil spills were obtained using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). To address the poor spectral separability between different types of light oils and weak spectral differences in heavy oils with different thicknesses, we propose the adaptive long-term moment estimation (ALTME) optimizer, which cumulatively learns the spectral characteristics and then builds a marine oil-spill detection model based on a one-dimensional convolutional neural network. The results of the detection experiment show that the ALTME optimizer can store in memory multiple batches of long-term oil-spill spectral information, accurately identify the type of oil spills, and detect different thicknesses of oil films. The overall detection accuracy is larger than 98.09%, and the Kappa coefficient is larger than 0.970. The F1-score for the recognition of light-oil types is larger than 0.971, and the F1-score for detecting films of heavy oils with different film thicknesses is larger than 0.980. The proposed optimizer also performs well on a public hyperspectral dataset. We further carried out a feasibility study on oil-spill detection using UAV thermal infrared remote sensing technology, and the results show its potential for oil-spill detection in strong sunlight.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-79
Author(s):  
Godfried Junio Sebastian Matahelemual ◽  
Agung Budi Harto ◽  
Tri Muji Susantoro

Oil spill is a serious problem that could lead to economic and ecological losses, both in the short and long term. On July 12, 2019, there occurred an oil leakage around YYA-1 oil platform of Pertamina Hulu Energi Offshore North West Java (PHE ONWJ), located off the northern coast of Karawang, Java Sea. This incident has caused the death of fishes and marine animals, damage to coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrass beds, and several health problems of coastal communities. Therefore, it is necessary to map and monitor oil spills, so that actions can be taken to prevent the spread of oil spills. This study aims to map the distribution of oil spills in Karawang sea using multitemporal Sentinel-1 data from July to September 2019. The detection is carried out using the adaptive thresholding algorithm combined with manual interpretation. The result shows that the oil spills spread around Karawang sea from YYA-1 platform to Sedari Village and there are oil spills spreading from the Central Plant F/S platform. The oil spills tend to shift westward from July to September 2019. This shifting is supposed to be influenced by current and wave factors that were dominant moving westward at that time. Based on data processing, it was found that the oil spill area from July to September was respectively 24.79 km2, 20.05 km2, and 27.12 km2.


Epidemiology ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. S128-S129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Woochul Jeong ◽  
Jeongae Lee ◽  
Heon Kim ◽  
Jongil Hur ◽  
Sang-Yong Eom ◽  
...  

2012 ◽  
Vol 66 (5) ◽  
pp. 1061-1068 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Dzwairo ◽  
F. A. O. Otieno ◽  
G. M. Ochieng ◽  
J. J. Bezuidenhout

Weight factors (WFs) were developed for surface raw water pollution indicator variables in Vaal River's Upper and Middle Vaal sub-basins, in South Africa. The overall objective was to formulate a quantifiable ranking system to indicate importance of pollutant variables given their established effects on human and environmental health. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was applied to qualitative data that were obtained from South Africa's target water quality ranges as well as from literature which represented expert opinion. The human and environmental health effect choice sets were ranked from 1 to 5 on nine pollutant variable criteria: NH3/NH4+, Cl−, conductivity (EC), dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, F−, NO3−/NO2−, PO43− and SO42−. The weighted-sum method (WSM) then assigned highest and lowest normalised weights (NWs) to F− and Cl−, respectively, for human health effects (εhh) alternative. Highest and lowest NWs were assigned to NH3/NH4ε and EC, respectively, for environmental health effects (εeh) alternative. After aggregating the εhh and εeh WFs, resultant values ranked the variables from highest to lowest as follows: F−&gt;NO3−/NO2−&gt;/NH3/NH4+&gt;DO&gt;pH&gt;SO42−&gt;PO43−&gt;EC&gt;Cl−. The results represented the importance of variables given their established effects on human and environmental health. It was concluded that WFs provided a quantifiable barometer which could signal harmful exposure to elucidate negative effects of using polluted surface raw water in the study area. The values could be incorporated into water quality models like water quality indices. The approach could be used to develop WFs for other sites, taking into account issues like the site's pollution variables of concern as well as using a ranking key constructed from established literature.


2001 ◽  
Vol 2001 (1) ◽  
pp. 413-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tianhong Zhou ◽  
Hongtan Liu

ABSTRACT When oil is spilled at sea, aerosols containing oil or chemical dispersants (when they are used to combat the oil spill) can be formed from wind/wave interactions, wave/ship interactions, and some other attendant cleanup operations. This may result in oil aerosol exposure to response workers or the nearby public. In this paper, a modeling approach is proposed to study the resultant aerosol concentrations around an oil spill site. This computational modeling is developed by integrating aerosol formation with aerosol transportation equations. Using this model, several hypothetical scenarios can be generated. From computational iterations, it is seen that this exposure may be negligible in most situations, but under extreme conditions, a cause for concern.


1989 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl R. Mackerer

Metal cutting/grinding fluids are of three basic types: straight oil (insoluble), oil-in-water emulsions (soluble) and synthetic/semi-synthetic. All contain a variety of additives to improve performance. Human exposure occurs primarily by direct skin contact with the liquid or by skin and respiratory contact after fluid misting. Dermatitis caused by primary or direct skin irritation is the most prevalent health effect of exposure to cutting fluids. Occasionally allergic dermatitis is seen which is related to the development of sensitization to one or more of the additive components. Recent studies indicate that long-term exposure to cutting fluids does not result in increased incidences of lung cancer, urinary bladder cancer, gastrointestinal cancer, or death from non-malignant respiratory diseases. Long-term exposure to certain cutting fluids, however, is believed to have resulted in certain types of skin cancer, especially scrotal cancer. It is likely that these carcinogenic responses were caused by contact with polycyclic aromatic compounds (PCA) of 3–7 rings. Modern base oils which are severely refined have very low levels of PCA, are not carcinogenic in animal bioassays, and are unlikely to be carcinogenic in man. This is not necessarily true for re-refined oils which may contain significant levels of PCA and polychlorinated biphenyls derived from coming-ling used cutting oils with used engine oils and transformer oils. Cutting oils, themselves, generally do not accumulate significant levels of carcinogenic PCA during use. Additives, in theory, can cause a variety of health effects either directly or through the generation of reaction products such as nitrosamines. In actual use, adverse health effects appear to be limited to occasional instances of allergic contact dermatitis. Nitrosamines are extremely carcinogenic in test animals; although no human cancer cases directly attributable to nitrosamine contamination have been observed, nitrosating agents and amines should not be combined in cutting fluid formulations. It is difficult to anticipate or predict the potential toxicity of a particular cutting fluid formulation because of the presence of variable amounts of proprietary additives which, themselves, are often complex reaction mixtures. Thus, each additive and final formulation must be evaluated on a case by case basis to appropriately assess potential health hazards.


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