Researchers in town testing residents for exposure to algae toxins

To the untrained eye, it might have looked like a bunch of random strangers gathered in the Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre’s lobby, but to the scientists who’d driven across the state to study them, those in the small crowd were scientific ground-breakers.

High-profile as Southwest Florida’s recent toxic algae outbreaks have been, there have been few studies about their effect on the humans who live, work or play around the foul-smelling blooms.

Monday morning, a team of researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute began the painstaking work of filling the knowledge gap by taking samples from several dozen people who’d volunteered to be anonymous subjects.

“We’re here looking at exposure to harmful algal blooms among residents in Florida, so we're taking multiple samples to try to measure some of the potential toxins,” said Harbor Branch epidemiologist Adam Schaefer. "Little is known about the long-term effects of these toxins, so this study serves a lot of purposes (examining) potential health effects and how that relates to exposure to some of these blooms."

Previous coverage:Algae-exposed? Researchers taking samples from people who've been around toxic blooms

The volunteers' blood, urine and nasal swabs will begin building a body of data about the presence of toxins from the blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) that’s been plaguing the Caloosahatchee and inland waterways since early June, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began releasing polluted Lake Okeechobee water down the river.

One who'd come was Cape Coral resident Denise Michael. She lives a stone’s throw from the river on a canal from which thick algae was removed four times in two weeks “which gives you some idea of how bad it was,” she said. “and the last time they were here, I went out there and I just couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t take a breath in. They thought they were going to have to call 911. I’ve never in my life had something like that. It scares me."

Research has shown possible links between some algae toxins and neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and liver failure.

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The kind of algae that's been blooming locally produces microcystin, a potent poison that, depending on the dose, can cause rashes, wheezing, vomiting or death in humans and animals after short-term exposure. There's less certainty about its longer-term effects, but a growing body of studies point to potentially dire consequences. The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified one of its forms, Microcystin-LR, as a possible human carcinogen. 

However, in August, a Florida Department of Health spokesman told The News-Press: "There is no evidence that acute exposures to these toxins have long-term health impacts ... chronic exposures are not a concern with these blooms due to limited exposure potential," wrote spokesman Brad Dalton in an email.

Many researchers disagree with the agency's assessment, including Walter Bradley, a neurologist and chairman emeritus of the University of Miami School of Medicine’s Department of Neurology Research, who says there's a strong link between algal toxins and nonalcoholic cirrhosis of the liver.

Research like Harbor Branch's can help fill in the many blanks connecting exposure to possible problems, said Schaefer, which is why each volunteer also detailed their experience with the toxic blooms in a questionnaire.

“We want to look at ... where they were potentially exposed to these blooms, how long, what activities (then) relating that to specific environmental concentrations that we’re able to measure," Schaefer said, in order to "build a bigger picture in terms of what’s going on with the ecosystem and health."

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Monday's testing is just the beginning, he said — "more of a pilot analysis to developing longer-term data sets ... We’re going to have to continue to work through the process, but this is such an important issue to Southwest Florida in general we also want to make sure that we do our due diligence and take our time to be sure we do this correctly."

Last month, the Harbor Branch team sampled about 100 people on the state's east coast, and all showed "detectable levels" of microcystin in their noses, Schaefer told The News-Press sister newspaper TCPalm.

Although Schaefer says Harbor Branch has been “trying to develop partnerships with the (Florida) health department," so far, the state agency has not reached back, nor has it helped with funding. Harbor Branch has mounted its own money-raising campaign that's netted $3,876 so far of a $10,000 goal.

"We really want to get to the bottom of what ‘s driving these blooms,” Schaefer said. "So we’re coming at it from multiple angles because we’re concerned about the overall ecosystem."