University researchers across campus departments are starting, conducting and completing studies to better understand numerous effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis, which began more than 100 days ago.
“Our researchers take the potential impacts of this disastrous and as of yet ongoing oil spill quite seriously,” Doris Carver, interim vice chancellor for research and economic development said in a news release. “From the beginning, our faculty have been on the forefront using their expertise to help the situation.”The National Science Foundation awarded at least four Rapid Response Grants to University researchers “to study a variety of pathways in which the oil spill might impact the fragile ecosystems — both wildlife and human — of the Louisiana wetlands and Gulf of Mexico region,” according to a news release.
Most recently, Robert Cook, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, was given such a grant with researchers from Texas A&M University and Georgia Institute of Technology. The team will “investigate the impact of oil contamination from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico on the composition of dissolved organic matter, or DOM, in the Louisiana coastal marshes,” according to the NSF website. The researchers will collect samples “from marshes along Terrebonne Bay” and hope to prove changes to the DOMs will be indicative of the recent spill. 
Crystal Johnson and Ed Laws, researchers in the School of the Coast and Environment’s Department of Environmental Sciences, are working with Gary King in the Department of Biological Sciences to study how oil will affect natural bacteria found in oyster beds. These bacteria can cause disease in humans and animals, and the researchers will study how oil impacts phytoplankton, which can produce antibiotics that slow the bacteria’s growth.Three professors in the Department of Political Science — Christopher Kenny, Christopher Weber and Kathleen Bratton —  will study how people use social networking websites during a major disaster. They received a Rapid Response Grant to “determine the social nature of disaster response, or … how social networks shape and influence emotional and behavioral responses to large-magnitude disasters,” according to the release. Sociology professors Matthew Lee and Troy Blanchard completed a survey to understand health impacts on Louisiana residents caused by the spill. Lee and Blanchard worked with the University’s Public Policy Research Lab to interview via telephone more than 900 residents near the spill starting June 17.
The study found notable increases in self-rated stress and constant worry among these residents about the spill’s impacts and how it will affect friends and family. Seven in 10 respondents “worried about having to move” because of the spill, and “more than 35 percent reported experiencing headaches or migraines or feeling sick to their stomach some of the time or almost constantly in the week before the interview because of their worry over the oil spill,” and nearly 43 percent were “unable to focus on their usual jobs or tasks” because of worry from the spill.
University finance professor Joseph Mason recently completed a study, “The Economic Cost of a Moratorium on the Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration to the Gulf Region,” and testified this week before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship to speak against the federal government’s offshore deepwater drilling moratorium, according to the committee’s website. The Obama administration first enacted a moratorium on offshore deepwater drilling on May 30 — just more than a month after the Deepwater Horizon’s April 20 explosion — and while the “goal of the moratorium is to shield the Gulf from further harmful effects by limiting the likelihood of a similar oil spill in the future,” Mason’s study says “ceasing offshore drilling, even for as little as six months, … will further depress onshore state and local economies dependent on oil production.”
The study estimates the moratorium could cost the Gulf states more than $2.1 billion in output, 8,000 jobs, $487 million in wages and almost $98 million in tax revenues. More than 12,000 jobs, $2.7 billion in economic activity and $219 million in tax revenue could be lost nationally due to the moratorium, according to Mason’s study.
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Contact Nicholas Persac at [email protected]