Despite repeated assurances from federal officials and President
Obama, independent scientists and public health experts have serious
concerns about the long-term safety of Gulf seafood consumption.

In particular, experts tell Raw Story, contaminants from the massive
oil spill and unprecedented use of the dispersants employed to dissolve
the spill have the potential to cause cancer and neurological disorders.

In interviews with Raw Story last week, scientists and public health
experts expressed concerns over possible long-term risks from eating
contaminated Gulf seafood.

Polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are cancer-causing chemicals found in
crude oil that can accumulate in the food chain, absorbed by fish and
shellfish. During the ongoing testing of seafood in the Gulf of Mexico
by federal and state authorities, PAHs are of primary concern.

But crude oil also contains heavy metals such as lead, mercury and
cadmium that can accumulate in the food chain as well, though at a
slower pace than PAHs, and are toxic to the brain and nervous system.

Another potential long-term health concern left in the wake of BP’s
catastrophic oil spill is the nearly two million gallons of dispersant
unleashed into the Gulf, much of it subsurface, which made both the
amount used and its use unprecedented.

In interviews with Raw Story last week, FDA and National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration officials said that all fish and shellfish in
reopened federal and state waters have tested well beneath the level of
concern for PAHs.

But what worries some scientists and public health experts is what
these tests don’t — and can’t — reveal. They feel it’s “premature” for
government officials to claim Gulf seafood poses no future health
risks.

“Those are the short-term effects,” said Edward Trapido, the Wendell
Gauthier Chair of Cancer Epidemiology at the Louisiana State University
School of Public Health.

“We don’t know the long-term effects,” he explained. “And we don’t
know, particularly related to cancer and particularly related to age and
exposure, what the long-term effects will be.”

Trapido testified in June at a House Subcommittee on Energy and
Environment hearing on the spill and is heading a research group at LSU
that will look at a range of health effects, including psychiatric and
behavioral effects, chronic diseases and cancers.

The issue we don’t know at this point, he said, is the extent to
which these compounds may bioacccumulate in shellfish or fish and what
the half-lives are.

“So you could imagine if a large fish feasted on several hundred
small fish and each of those small fish have eaten a certain number of
microorganisms which had a little of contaminant, there’s a possibility,
certainly, that you could go over the current measurements.”

In interviews with Raw Story last week, NOAA and FDA officials, in
general, tended to downplay bioaccumulation of PAHs in Gulf seafood. But
in some cases they denied it’s occurring at all, or even that it could
occur.

“We have not found it,” FDA spokeswoman Meghan Scott claimed. “Every
sample that we have tested for PAHs has come back clean. It has the
potential to [bioaccumulate]. But we have not found it, even from
samples taken from inside of closure areas.”

Christine Patrick, NOAA spokeswoman for seafood safety, went so far
as to tell Raw Story, “The concept that the oil bioaccumulates [in
seafood] – that’s not correct. It’s metabolized and excreted.”

Raw Story confirmed, in consultation with independent scientists,
that these two statements were, respectively, impossible and inaccurate.

Miriam Rotkin-Ellman, a staff scientist at the Natural Resources
Defense Council (NRDC), a leading national environmental group,
underscored two things that NOAA, FDA and Gulf state officials have been
playing down.

“The monitoring that’s currently being conducted by both NOAA and
various different state agencies, and compiled by FDA, show that there
is PAH contamination of fish in the Gulf,” she said. “They are detecting
various different levels of the various different PAH constituents.”

Ellman, who contributed to last month’s peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study,
which identified a number of issues about the health of Gulf seafood,
also noted, “There is a good body of literature showing that seafood can
be impacted by these contaminants.”

The JAMA report cites a 2002 study
in the peer-reviewed journal Marine Environmental Research on the
lasting effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which concluded: "Our
data show that 10 years after the spill, nearshore fishes within the
original spill zone were still exposed to residual hydrocarbons. All
biomarkers [for contaminants] were elevated in fish collected from sites
originally oiled, in comparison to fish from unoiled sites.”

Ellman added, “We understand that the different types of seafood –
fish vs. crustaceans and bivalves – all have different capacities to
retain the contaminants, and that’s important to note. But it’s not the
basis on which to make a blanket statement that there’s no risk.”

“So it’s premature,” Trapido cautioned, “to say that it’s safe in the long-term.”

“We can say that it’s safe at this point based on what we know,” he
continued. “But as a cancer epidemiologist, which is what I am, I have
to maintain an air of skepticism and say, well, we don’t have any data
to make a judgment on the long-term cases.”

The startling lack of data on the future health effects from oil
spills on humans was a common lament among experts who spoke with Raw
Story.

Trapido confirmed that the longest follow-up study that’s ever been
done on people exposed to oil spills was just four years, and that was
to track mental health only.

Two new areas of scientific research not being accounted for in the
current risk assessments could also adversely impact future health,
Ellman noted.

She said that studies have shown that early life exposure to the
chemical benzo(a)pyrene, one of the most carcinogenic PAHs, increases
the risk of cancer later in life. It wouldn’t have the same effect, she
clarified, if the exposure came later in life.

“So because children’s bodies are different and they’re developing,
exposures that happen early in life can have a more detrimental effect
than if they were exposed later on,” said Ellman.

In addition to the cancer risks, Ellman told Raw Story that there’s
also a new body of literature that has shown adverse developmental
impacts from in utero exposure to PAHs, such as delayed growth, low
birth weight and other indicators of impact during fetal development.

NOAA toxicologist John Stein said that he and other scientists within
the agency have proposed to continue monitoring the Gulf waters to
ensure seafood safety for the next three to five years. But Patrick
confirmed that the agency has not made an official commitment to this.

Independent scientists and public health officials who spoke with Raw
Story agreed that even if federal and state officials committed to such
a time frame, it would still fall short of what’s necessary.

They pointed out that due to bioaccumulation in the food chain, it’s
quite possible contamination levels in Gulf fish and seafood may
actually be higher in three to five years.

"If they were to completely suspend any monitoring prematurely,"
Ellman warned, "we wouldn’t necessarily know whether levels of
contaminants in seafood that we’re most worried about have gone back
down or remain elevated."