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While a hurricane's destruction is immediately visible to the people in its path, aftereffects like carbon monoxide inhalation and food poisoning often aren't evident until days after winds die and storm waters recede.
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But a University of Florida toxicologist and Florida Department of Health officials have pioneered a real-time system for monitoring post-storm public health threats and it's one that could save lives. Using electronic data from the Florida Poison Information Center's hotline, the experts designed a surveillance system to identify health hazards and make this data available to state health department epidemiologists over the web. This allowed state health workers in hurricane-lashed areas to immediately see emerging patterns of carbon monoxide, food, water and fuel siphoning accidents, up to the minute and down to the neighborhood. For example, numerous reports of gastrointestinal distress in a small geographic area may indicate problems with a municipal water supply, allowing health officials to warn residents to switch to bottled water until the local water source is cleared.
Dr. Jay Schauben / UF poison control expert:
"That's the primary benefit is that you're not waiting and reporting on things that happened three days ago - you're seeing something and interacting in real time to stop it."
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Although the monitoring system was first tested in 2004, Florida officials refined it for the infamous 2005 hurricane season. The hour-by-hour tracking of poisonings used in the Florida model was even adopted by the centers for disease control in the aftermath of Katrina using national poison center data and proved helpful. After the Florida landfalls of Katrina and Wilma, health officials were able to track and address two-hundred to three-hundred percent spikes in incidents like generator carbon monoxide inhalation and gasoline ingestion due to improper siphoning.
Dr. Jay Schauben / UF poison control expert:
"The quicker you can identify a problem, the faster you can focus your attention, the more individuals you might spare doing the wrong thing which gets them into trouble, health-wise. And I think that's the concept here: The data coming out three days later is not going to help those individuals within those three days."
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At the University of Florida Health Science Center, I'm Mike Garrison
