New Orleans, Louisiana Tulane University was granted $18.7 million for two multiyear environmental health projects aiming to help Gulf Coast residents who have been affected by the BP oil leak back in 2010.
The School of Public Health and Tropical medicine will set up a network of environmental health experts using $15 million from BP PLC's settlement of class-action medical claims. The network of experts is designed to help primary care doctors in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
Moreover, the Baton Rouge Area Foundation granted Dr. Maureen Lichtveld an additional $3.7 million for a separate three-year project to determine how much seafood Louisiana residents consume. The project will also include assessing typical environmental hazards that can affect seafood, so as to provide a more accurate assessment of risks for consumers if another environmental disaster occurs.
According to Lichtveld, the environmental health network is only a part of the five-year multistate program, which includes training health workers in environmental health and disaster preparedness. "I'm especially excited by another component - to integrate environmental health as a science in all science curricula in selected public high schools in the four-state area," said Lichtveld, as cited by the Associated Press. "So we begin early to develop that pipeline of community leaders who know about environmental health and are eager to ask environmental health questions."
This effort, Lichtveld added, will include an annual summer institute for science teachers, as well as providing high school students with the chance to conduct research. "We're building this capacity at every level, from high school level to graduate level."
Meanwhile, the three-year study assessing seafood consumption will tap into the community level in certain areas on the Louisiana coast, and will determine how much of what various sorts of seafood residents eat. "What we'd like to know for the parishes that are involved, and the people - fisherfolk, people in New Orleans or in bayou parishes - is what it is they really eat," said Lichtveld. "Not only how much, but what. What kind of seafood they eat; how much of it they eat. What we currently know about the contamination in the seafood."
According to Lichtveld, each community has its own dietary patterns, different from other communities'. "It's critical to understand the potential for exposure - or if there is no exposure."
