Case Study: Tulane University achieves confirmation of low health and cancer risks from Gulf shrimp with Palisade @RISK

How Safe is That Shrimp? @RISK Weighs Health Risks of Seafood after Deepwater Horizon Spill

Tulane University turned to Palisade's @RISK after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill to evaluate whether locally harvested shrimp posed health risks to a Vietnamese-American community that consumes far more shrimp and has lower average body mass than national averages. The community and university sought a targeted, probabilistic assessment because FDA national-average assumptions did not reflect local consumption patterns or fishing locations.

Using Palisade’s @RISK, Tulane researchers ran 10,000‑iteration probabilistic models combining measured PAH concentrations from locally collected shrimp, survey data on body weight and shrimp intake, and exposure assumptions; sensitivity analysis flagged chemical concentration and intake rate as the main drivers. The testing found very low PAH levels (no known carcinogens detected), and the @RISK models showed no unacceptable acute or cancer risks under realistic assumptions—only an extreme, highly conservative scenario produced risks above 1-in-10,000 in the far upper tail.

Tulane University

Jeffrey Wickliffe

Associate Professor of Global Environmental Health Sciences