What happens if oil spills

The flooding enabled the spreading of spilled oil over larger areas, affecting about 1, homes in several residential neighborhoods. The effects of oil spills on humans may be direct and indirect, depending on the type of contact with the oil spill. Direct exposure to oil spills — occurs close to where people live or work and where they may come in contact with oil spill components:.

Indirect exposure to oil spills - even when people live in places far from where the actual oil spill took place:. The main oil spill effects include a variety of diseases, negative economic impact, pollution with crude oil or petroleum products distillates such as: gasoline, diesel products, jet fuels, kerosene, fuel oil, as well as heavy distillates like hydraulic and lubricating oils and the aesthetic issues that affect the residents of the affected areas in multiple ways.

The negative economic impact is a major effect of oil spill pollution. It can affect the community where the oil spill occurred in a number of ways, among which the following are the most important:. The aesthetic and recreational impact is related to the visible effects of oil spill pollution oil slick, sheens appearing on coast waters, shoreline, and beaches, wetlands, etc. When more serious, the complete closure of such recreational areas may occur, at least temporary, until the spill is removed and the cleanup process ends.

Health problems due to the exposure to spilled oil or its volatile compounds may appear. Oil-spill pollution diseases are obviously not restricted to fishermen, affecting the population residents living in the affected area alike.

Large oil spills, which usually occur in the oceans, affect commercial fishermen, seamen living in the affected areas and ship workers on the ships near the oil spill location. Fishermen are directly affected by large marine oil spills that contaminate the fish species swimming in the oil-polluted water, along with ecosystem livelihoods. Oil spills have major environmental and economic effects.

Oil spills can also affect human health. These effects can depend on what kind of oil was spilled and where on land, in a river, or in the ocean. Other factors include what kind of exposure and how much exposure there was.

People who clean up the spill are more at risk. Next page: Find out who takes care of the problem and what we all can do to prevent future oil spills. Explore other ways to learn about the ocean and the impacts of oil. Who Takes Care of the Problem? Barge E2MS collided with a towboat on February 22, and began leaking barrels of Bakken crude oil into the lower Mississippi River.

Coast Guard. Spills can be caused by: people making mistakes or being careless. Then what happens? How do people clean up the oil? People may use any of the following kinds of tools to clean up spilled oil : booms, which are floating barriers to oil for example, a big boom may be placed around a tanker that is leaking oil, to collect the oil.

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