Instruments for assessing the impacts of oil spills: an integrated approach to health, the environment and the socioeconomic profile of exposed areas

Advances in the oil industry have been associated with major disasters involving oil spills in offshore fields, negatively impacting life and the environment. We considered the importance of monitoring and evaluating these events, using various instruments, according to three research axes: health; the environment; and the socioeconomic situation of exposed populations. Thus, the objective was to survey, through a scoping review, scientific evidence involving the application of these instruments to assess the impacts of oil spills. Different databases and languages were used to search for the works. The data were reviewed by a pair of researchers, who carried out the qualitative evaluation. For synthesis of the results, we considered 45 studies distributed among observational studies with no control group, cohort studies with control group, and cross-sectional studies, with a predominance of studies focused on the health axis (n = 39; 86.66%) and with interview method (n = 29; 64.44%). We found 75 records of instruments used, with Likert-type scales, combined scales and free response patterns. In addition, there was a gap in studies on the environmental and socioeconomic axes, especially in an integrated manner. Finally, we considered the importance of new research including essential characteristics of the instruments (consistency, reliability, faithfulness, cross-cultural adaptations) for the possibility of building multidimensional matrices to monitor disasters caused by human action, facilitating decision-making in the formulation of government policies and actions.