An association between oil spill clean-up work and cardiovascular disease.

Abstract

In December 2007, Taean, South Korea, experienced the largest oil spill in Korean history. After about 10 years of follow-up, we evaluated the long-term effect of the disaster on the cardiovascular health of residents and clean-up workers/volunteers. We examined the relationship between the duration of oil clean-up work and the risk of incident angina and myocardial infarction (MI). We used data from a prospective cohort study, the Health Effects Research of Oil Spill (HEROS); we included adult cohort members free from cardiovascular disease who completed at least the first two surveys (n=1737). At baseline, members reported the number of days they participated in oil clean-up work; during the subsequent surveys, they reported newly diagnosed cases of angina or MI. We fitted a time-varying interval-censored proportional hazard model, controlling for age, sex, body mass index, smoking status, monthly household income, and distance from the affected seashore to residence. The risk of incident angina or MI was greater in those with more than 15 days' exposure; those with 15-59 days showed a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.34 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.87, 2.06) those with 60-179 days had an HR of 1.31 (0.95, 1.79), and those worked longest (180 or more days) showed the strongest association with a HR of 1.75 (95% CI: 1.17, 2.61). We found that a greater duration of clean-up work was associated with an increased risk of incident angina or MI.