Beach Exposure And Child Health Study (BEACHES)
Implementing Organization
Booker T. Washington High School
Overview
DWH Project Funding
$499,813
Known Leveraged Funding
$0
Funding Organization
Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI)
Funding Program
Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative GoMRI Grant Program
Details
Project Category
Science
Project Actions
Physical Aspects Research
Targeted Resources
Community and Human Health
Project Description
The fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform during April 2010 resulted in significant losses from the Gulf's economy which was caused, in part, by oil impacts to 1,728 km of coastline and uncertainties about health risks and the subsequent closure of 89 beaches. To help guide policies for beach closures and to protect the public's health, research is needed to improve the assessment of exposures by integrating location- and time-specific child activity patterns with more realistic OSC concentration distributions at oil spill impacted beaches. The mission of BEACHES is to evaluate health risks of OSCs by integrating realistic play activities and distributions of OSCs in the beach environments. BEACHES will accomplish this mission by quantifying children’s exposure in the beach environment taking into account beach physical factors which influence child play activities and the distribution of OSCs and utilizing historical data from prior oil spills to create, test, and validate algorithms that describe time-space specific concentrations of OSCs in beach zones where children play. These contributions will be used to create an exposure modeling and estimation platform that can guide beach closures in light of health risks and can promote safe beach usage.
Contact
Helena Solo-GabrieleNone
hmsolo@miami.edu
Project Website
None
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