Oil Spill Health Effects To Be Studied By National Institutes Of
Health WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. National Institutes of
Health has launched a massive, long-range health study of people
who helped clean up last year's BP oil spill in the Gulf of
Mexico. The study aims to check for possible health effects on
55,000 clean-up workers and volunteers in Louisiana,
Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Participants will be followed
for up to 10 years, NIH said in a statement. The study was
launched on Monday, the same day U.S. regulators granted the
first deepwater drilling permit since the massive BP spill last
April prompted the Obama administration to impose a drilling
moratorium. More than 4 million barrels of oil spewed into the
Gulf of Mexico from BP's well after the Deepwater Horizon
drilling rig exploded, killing 11 workers. The GuLF Study --
short for Gulf Long-term Follow-up Study -- is funded by NIH,
which received a $10 million gift from BP to study health
effects related to the spill. BP is not invol