FSO Safer: Risks to Yemen - Health
FSO Safer: Risks to Yemen - Health
An oil spill would have direct harmful health impacts on response workers and the local population
[NOTE: The risks that the F.S.O. Safer poses can broadly be categorised into (i) Yemen’s humanitarian situation, (ii) general environmental, (iii) world trade, and (iv) the wider region.
This series of posts will be based on a wide variety of publicly available sources. However, a special shout out - in terms of the structure and content it provides - is the Greenpeace briefing paper “FSO Safer: A Shipwreck In Slow Motion”, which in turn draws a lot on an article in Nature by Benjamin Q. Huynh et al called “Public health impacts of an imminent Red Sea oil spill.”]
Yemen’s existing health crisis
Yemen has been widely described as the world’s worst or largest humanitarian crisis. While the protracted and brutal war since 2015 is the more immediate reason for this, Yemen was already the most vulnerable country in the Middle East.
Direct from an April 2022 USAID Fact, here are some startling statistics on the health situation Yemen’s population of over 30 million people face:
“19.7 million people lack access to basic health services”.
“Only 51 percent of the health facilities in Yemen are fully functioning and of those, most lack operational specialists, equipment, and basic medicines. These gaps impact services for the most vulnerable, especially women and children.”
“Yemen’s maternal mortality ratio is one of the highest in the region at 164 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. Among children, the under-5 mortality rate is 59.6 deaths per 1,000 live births, infant mortality rate is 45.7 deaths per 1,000 live births, and neonatal mortality rate is 28.1 deaths per 1,000 live births.”
“In addition, the degrading health care system has resulted in vulnerability to and the emergence of diseases that can generally be cured or have been eradicated elsewhere. This ranges from a cholera outbreak to the reemergence of diphtheria, measles, and polio. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these issues with a lack of testing, treatment, and reporting capacity and low vaccine acceptance among the population.”
Health impacts of an oil spill from the FSO Safer
Aside from the disruptions to the local fishing industry and the potential closure of ports (which would be very deleterious to imports of vital aid, food and fuel, as well as impacting the supply of water), the spilling of crude oil into the Red Sea would have negative health impacts of its own.
Drawing on the Greenpeace briefing paper - which does provide the caveat that an “element of unpredictability” does exist when projecting long-term impacts, as these may only be evident in the long-run - potential direct health impacts and drivers are as follows:
Oil contains elements harmful to humans
Crude oil contains carcinogenic chemicals which are harmful to both humans and animals. Within one such family of chemicals - polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) - The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified some as “carcinogenic to humans” and some as “probably carcinogenic to humans”.
It also contains “volatile organic compounds” such as the carcinogenic benzene, toluene and styrene, as well as toxic heavy metals such as “nickel, vanadium, copper, cadmium and lead”.
As the light crude oil on the Safer has been stagnant for many years and has potentially formed a “thick sludge” through oxidisation, there could also be other potential impacts as well.
These harmful elements can have various effects
The health impacts will vary depending on factors such as time of exposure to air, the extent it has mixed with water, and whether chemical dispersants were used to break up surface oil slicks.
Past examples elsewhere of exposures to workers and others in the local community have seen issues such as:
“headache, nausea, dizziness, itchy eyes, cough or sore throat, rashes and skin irritation”,
“psychological disorders (such as anxiety, stress and depression)”, and
exposure to those carcinogenic and toxic components mentioned above.
If chemical dispersants were used, there would be additional exposure to “these chemicals and mixtures of detergents and oil”.
“Exposure to crude oil can be toxic to the human endocrine system and interrupt the metabolism of some hormones.”
Air quality will deteriorate as “toxic chemical compounds (including volatile organic compounds or VOCs) will evaporate from the oil” and, along with small aerosols, can deeply penetrate lung tissue if inhaled.
Cardiovascular impacts can also be expected after oil pollution exposure.
Explosion and burning
If the Safer explodes, “burning oil would be a serious air pollution risk because the fumes contain black carbon (also called soot, and which contains toxic polyaromatic hydrocarbons), particulate matter (which may be composed of toxic heavy metals and nitrogen/sulfur compounds), nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and VOCs”.
In addition, an “immediate risk is to personnel on board the tanker who may be caught in the fire”. Right after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon spill off the coast of the United States, “workers attempting to mitigate the spread of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico through controlled burning reported respiratory problems including wheezing, tightness in the chest”.
Yemen’s inadequate health infrastructure and port closures will exacerbate any health issues
The worst affected would be those workers and local members of the community dealing directly with the aftermaths of the spill, such as through cleaning up of the oil or coming to the rescue of stricken animals. While negative impacts can be mitigated by the use of full personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks, gloves, protective eye-gear, respirators, etc. delivery of such PPE would be impeded by disrupted or closed ports.
In the aftermath of a spill, medical examinations and testing of exposed persons would need to be conducted. “A valid concern is whether a medical protocol to assess acute and chronic exposure to spilled crude oil is in place and whether workers and people affected will have access to adequate medical care.”
In short, if the F.S.O. Safer were to either sink or explode, the harmful effects have the potential to be not only widespread, but also have long-term serious health impacts on a country already beset by deep, structural health issues. The funds need to be disbursed as quickly as possible to allow the oil transfer to commence.