From The New York Times:

On Tuesday afternoon, 56 days into the spill, BP announced that a first installment of $25 million would flow soon to groups of researchers in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.  And the director of the National Institutes of Health told a House committee on Tuesday that the institutes will spend $10 million on research on the potential health impacts of the spill.

Louisiana State University will get $5 million of BP’s money. An additional $10 million will go to the Florida Institute of Oceanography, a consortium of 20 institutions with marine science interests in that state, including the 11 state universities. And a final $10 million will go to the Northern Gulf Initiative, a consortium led by Mississippi State University that includes four other institutions scattered across the Gulf Coast states.

BP pledged that more money would be coming beyond the $25 million. It appointed an expert panel that will make recommendations on which institutions will receive those funds, with Rita Colwell, one of the most respected names in American science, as chairwoman. Ms. Colwell, an environmental microbiologist who holds a degree in oceanography, formerly headed the National Science Foundation and is now a distinguished professor at the Johns Hopkins University.

As for the money from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis S. Collins, the institutes’ director, said it would go toward studying how cleanup workers and gulf residents were exposed to toxins from the spill — the “respiratory, immunological and neurobehaviorial effects,” as he put it.

As of June 5, the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said it had received 71 complaints believed to be related to exposure to oil spill pollutants. Fifty of those complaints involved response workers, and eight of those workers were briefly admitted to hospitals.