Skeptical Public Fears Oil-Spill Health Issues

Experts say medical risks will be mild, but many people just don't believe it

Images of oil-soaked birds and soiled beaches, combined with a general mistrust of industry and government, are making it hard for a skeptical public to believe there won’t be serious health effects from the devastating spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

For nearly seven weeks, local and national health officials have stressed that most medical risks likely will be mild and confined to workers exposed to oil and chemical dispersants at the source of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

“The human toxicity of oil, it’s pretty low,” said LuAnn White, a toxicologist and director of the Tulane Center for Applied Environmental Health in New Orleans, La. “It looks awful, it’s coating the birds, but the toxicity of those compounds is very low.”

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