NIH Receives $10 Million From BP To Research Health Issues

British oil mogul BP, the corporation responsible for the months-long oil spill disaster that has plagued the Gulf Coast since the Deepwater Horizon rig’s explosion on April 20th, announced Tuesday that it will be sending $10 million to the National Institutes of Health to support studies on acute and long term health issues associated with the oil spill.

The funding will go to the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, or GRI, a ten year, $500 million research program established by BP and conducted by the NIH, “to better understand and mitigate the environmental and potential health effects of the Gulf spill.”

“BP, in collaboration with the Unified Command, provided task specific training, supplied personal protective equipment and conducted extensive environmental and worker monitoring to protect the health of response workers involved in the cleanup,” said Bob Dudley, CEO of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization. “But there is much still to be learned from this incident, and BP is providing this funding to NIH because it is well positioned to assure the quality and the integrity of the independent research process.”