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    Review of 'Coping with oil spills: oil exposure and anxiety among residents of Gulf Coast states after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill'

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    Coping with oil spills: oil exposure and anxiety among residents of Gulf Coast states after the Deepwater Horizon oil spillCrossref
    Average rating:
        Rated 3 of 5.
    Level of importance:
        Rated 4 of 5.
    Level of validity:
        Rated 3 of 5.
    Level of completeness:
        Rated 2 of 5.
    Level of comprehensibility:
        Rated 3 of 5.
    Competing interests:
    The reviewer is specialised in disaster public health, so there might be acadmic competing interests.

    Reviewed article

    • Record: found
    • Abstract: found
    • Article: found
    Is Open Access

    Coping with oil spills: oil exposure and anxiety among residents of Gulf Coast states after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

    Introduction: In April 2010, a fatal explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico resulted in the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. This research describes the association of oil exposure with anxiety after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and evaluates effect modification by self-mastery, emotional support, and cleanup participation. Methods: To assess the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted the Gulf States Population Survey, a random-digit-dial telephone cross-sectional survey completed between December 2010 and December 2011 with 38,361 responses in four different Gulf Coast states­: Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. Anxiety severity was measured using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder symptom inventory. We used Tobit regression to model underlying anxiety as a function of oil exposure and hypothesized effect modifiers, adjusting for socio-demographics. Results: Latent anxiety was higher among those directly exposed to oil than among those who were not directly exposed to oil in confounder-adjusted models (β=2.84, 95% CI: 0.78, 4.91). Among individuals exposed to oil, there was no significant interaction between participating in cleanup activities and emotional support for anxiety ( P =0.16). However, among those directly exposed to oil, in confounder-adjusted models, participation in oil spill cleanup activities was associated with lower latent anxiety (β=-3.50, 95% CI: -6.10, -0.90). Conclusion: Oil contact was associated with greater anxiety, but this association appeared to be mitigated by cleanup participation.
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      Review information

      10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-EARTH.AL9TCO.v1.RWKFLI
      This work has been published open access under Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Conditions, terms of use and publishing policy can be found at www.scienceopen.com.

      Pollution and health,Public policymaking,Generalized anxiety; disaster recovery; mental health; emergency response; Gulf States Population Survey (GSPS),Environmental justice and inequality/inequity,Disaster recovery,Emergency response,Mental health,Gulf States Population Survey (GSPS),Sanitation, health, and the environment,Generalized anxiety,Sustainability,Environmental protection

      Review text

      This is an important paper to show that reliefe activitis may have a beneficial effect on mental status of people affected by a disaster.
      Even so, it might be better the author revise the following points.

      2. Methods

      a It is not clear how the Tobit latent anxiety seviry is used for the study. Did the author re-calculate the level of anxiety among the participants? If so, please describe the modified anxiety levels in Table 2.  Or if the score was used for regression analyses, please describe it.

      b Please describe the definition of binge drinking.

      c Please include the method of imputation used in Table 1 in the Method section.

      d Please describe Wald test used in Table 3 and 4 in the Method section.

       

      3. Results

      a Table1. What are the numbers in bracket means.

      b Please include average of anxiety score in each group so that the reader can see the trend.

      c Table 3 and 4 are not consistent with main manuscript. In manuscript the author use 'beta' as outcome, but the tables show 'difference in anxiety'. Also there is no explanation about what the difference in anxiety means e.g. what score was subtracted by what.   

       

      4. Discussion

      a Although the author discusse the novelty of the article in 4.2, it is not clear how the article is different from the research of Reference 10. 

      b As the authors discussed, previous studies sometimes show negative impact of volunteering on mental health. Please add discission about the reason why this discrepancy occurs e.g. differnce in disaster type, characteristics of the residents, etc.

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