Is Living in a U.S. Coastal City Good for One's Health?

BACKGROUND: Evidence suggests that living close to "blue spaces" (water features), particularly coastlines, has salutary effects on human health. METHODS: We analyzed five years of annual, self-reported general health and unhealthy days data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 165 urban areas across the contiguous U.S. We compared health self-reports for people living in coastal vs. non-coastal urban areas and for residents of the disaster-prone Gulf of Mexico region vs. other locations. Coastal urban areas were defined as those having ≥50% of their population living within 20 km of a coast. RESULTS: We found no overall health advantage of residing in a coastal urban location when all urban areas were considered. However, residents from non-Gulf of Mexico coastal urban areas reported modestly better health than residents from non-coastal areas. In contrast, self-reported health of Gulf coastal urban residents was significantly poorer than that of residents from other urban areas. CONCLUSIONS: The frequency of disasters and history of health and socioeconomic disparities in the Gulf region may be responsible, at least in part, for the apparent lack of health promoting effects of coastal location there.

Oil Spills and Human Health: Contributions of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.

The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) was established in 2010 with $500 million in funding provided by British Petroleum over a 10-year period to support research on the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and recovery. Contributions of the GoMRI program to date focused on human health are presented in more than 32 peer-reviewed papers published between 2011 and May 2019. Primary findings from review of these papers are (i) the large quantity of dispersants used in the oil cleanup have been associated with human health concerns, including through obesogenicity, toxicity, and illnesses from aerosolization of the agents; (ii) oil contamination has been associated with potential for increases in harmful algal blooms and numbers of pathogenic Vibrio bacteria in oil-impacted waters; and (iii) members of Gulf communities who are heavily reliant upon natural resources for their livelihoods were found to be vulnerable to high levels of life disruptions and institutional distrust. Positive correlations include a finding that a high level of community attachment was beneficial for recovery. Actions taken to improve disaster response and reduce stress-associated health effects could lessen negative impacts of similar disasters in the future. Furthermore, GoMRI has supported annual conferences beginning in 2013 at which informative human health-related presentations have been made. Based on this review, it is recommended that the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 be updated to include enhanced funding for oil spill impacts to human health.

A Conceptual Model to Assess Stress-Associated Health Effects of Multiple Ecosystem Services Degraded by Disaster Events in the Gulf of Mexico and Elsewhere.

Few conceptual frameworks attempt to connect disaster-associated environmental injuries to impacts on ecosystem services (the benefits humans derive from nature) and thence to both psychological and physiological human health effects. To our knowledge, this study is one of the first, if not the first, to develop a detailed conceptual model of how degraded ecosystem services affect cumulative stress impacts on the health of individual humans and communities. Our comprehensive Disaster-Pressure State-Ecosystem Services-Response-Health (DPSERH) model demonstrates that oil spills, hurricanes, and other disasters can change key ecosystem components resulting in reductions in individual and multiple ecosystem services that support people's livelihoods, health, and way of life. Further, the model elucidates how damage to ecosystem services produces acute, chronic, and cumulative stress in humans which increases risk of adverse psychological and physiological health outcomes. While developed and initially applied within the context of the Gulf of Mexico, it should work equally well in other geographies and for many disasters that cause impairment of ecosystem services. Use of this new tool will improve planning for responses to future disasters and help society more fully account for the costs and benefits of potential management responses. The model also can be used to help direct investments in improving response capabilities of the public health community, biomedical researchers, and environmental scientists. Finally, the model illustrates why the broad range of potential human health effects of disasters should receive equal attention to that accorded environmental damages in assessing restoration and recovery costs and time frames.