USC to Study Long-Term Health Impacts of Gas Leak

A USC clinical medicine professor will conduct a study of potential long-term health effects of the continuing gas leak in the Porter Ranch area, university officials said today.

Residents near the Aliso Canyon gas leak have reported issues ranging from headaches to nausea to nose bleeds. Thousands of people have relocated out of the area to escape the leaking gas.

Ed Avol, professor of clinical medicine in the Department of Preventive Medicine at Keck School of Medicine, said he and his colleagues plan to evaluate the potential long-term health effects of such a leak.

“The issues we usually consider run the whole gamut from respiratory to cardiovascular to potentially neurological,” Avol said. “Stress is also a concern. If there is a lot of stress, it triggers generic inflammation mechanisms in your body, which may lead to biological responses.”

He noted that methane and other chemicals emitted in natural gas can react with the air and create other chemicals, such as hydrogen sulfide, benzene, ethylbenzene and xylene.

“Researchers at USC are interested in investigating these chemical constituents and the long-term effects that might result from breathing in these chemicals,” he said.

Avol said the gas leak “parallels” the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“A blowout of a well is exuding a contaminant at great volumes for many months over a wide area, and we can’t do much about it,” he said. “The Southern California Gas Co. is trying to fix the problem but can’t do it very quickly. So it will continue to be a source of contamination for months.”

City News Service