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NATIONAL STATUS & TRENDS PROGRAM
Integrated Response to Hurricane Katrina
Preliminary Results from NOAA National Status and Trends (NS&T) Mussel Watch Survey (9/29-10/10/05) and Joint EPA/NOAA National Coastal Assessment (NCA) Survey on OSV BOLD Cruise “Hurricane Katrina: Leg 2” (10/9-14/05)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), US Geological Survey (USGS), US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and coastal States along the northern Gulf of Mexico are engaged in a comprehensive interagency effort to assess human-health and environmental impacts of Hurricane Katrina in affected coastal waters. The combined effort will seek to characterize the magnitude and extent of coastal contamination and associated human-health and ecological effects resulting from this unprecedented storm. This report provides a summary of preliminary results on microbial indicators of human-health risks from samples collected during two recent field surveys conducted as a part of this overall coordinated effort. NOS/NCCOS's Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research (CCEHBR) and Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment collaborated in the survey design and field collections, and CCEHBR additionally completed the bacteriological analyses included in this report.
Katrina Response Contamination Data
The following histograms provide an example of the kind of data that will be generated from the post Hurricane Katrina Mussel Watch sampling activity. Four contaminant groups have been summarized here: total-DDT is the sum of the DDT parent compounds and its metabolites; total-PCB is the sum of the 18 PCB congeners (compounds) regularly quantified by the Project; the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs - compounds found in fossil fuels and are also generated during the combustion of organic matter) have been divided in two groups, the smaller and large molecules. The division of PAHs between the low-molecular weight and high-molecular weight compounds generally corresponds to the division between compounds entering the environment from petroleum and those with a combustion source.
For each contaminant group two bar charts are available. The first provides trends data for the sum of the impacted sites for which long-term oyster contaminant data exist in the hurricane effected area (ranging from 1990-2002). The second graphic provides the average of the specific contaminant data for each site for one of those years (2002). The green lines found in the graphs indicate the median concentration of all Gulf coast oyster data for the years 1986-2003. The red line indicates the 85 percentile, or approximately two standard deviations, above the mean concentration, frequently indicated as “high” in publications resulting from the Mussel Watch Project. More recent regular monitoring data and the results of the hurricane-effects monitoring will be provided as they become available. These figures are provided here to set context for the ongoing assessment in the hurricane impact zone. NS&T scientists will provide the post Katrina data, along with an interpretation of that information as soon as it is quality controlled.
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| Time Series 1990-2002 | 2002 Sample Results | |
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| High Molecular Weight PAHs |
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| Low Molecular Weight PAHs |
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| PCBs |
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| DDT |
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