Dispersants, Oil Booms, & Oil/Water Separators

[WhiskeyGirl]

Dispersants add to Gulf spill’s toxic threats
By: Susan Buchanan, Contributing Writer
Posted: Tuesday, June 1, 2010 11:24 am
The Obama Administration has started to rein in BP's use of dispersants to break up spilled oil while a toxic stew swirls off Louisiana's coast, threatening marine life and human health.

A month after BP's oil-rig explosion on April 20, over 800,000 gallons of dispersants had been applied  to Gulf waters, including 100,000 gallons that were injected underwater. Helicopters distribute the chemical cleaners, or deodorized kerosene, on the ocean's surface, while robots dispense them deep in water.

After the spill, the Environmental Protection Agency let BP use dispersants because they were seen as "the lesser of two evils," said Ronald Kendall, director of The Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH) in Lubbock, Texas. Dispersants break oil into small droplets more quickly than ocean waves do, but they can also widen the area of the spill. Using them is "a tradeoff between, on the one hand attempting to keep oil from the shore by dispersing it, and on the other, injecting the ocean with chemicals," he said. Dispersants have never been applied in the quantities that BP is using them in the Gulf, he noted.

COREXIT is not the best possible choice for combating the Gulf spill, according to experts, who question why BP first selected and then asked to stick with the dispersant. Wenonah Hauter, executive director of advocacy group Food & Water Watch in Washington, DC, pointed to corporate ties between BP and Nalco as possibly contributing to the decision to use COREXIT. Nalco board member, Rodney Chase, worked for BP for 38 years.

For its part, BP continues to say that large quantities of COREXIT are readily available and that Nalco can deliver as much as 75,000 gallons per day indefinitely.

Marianne Cufone, fish program director at Food & Water Watch in Washington, DC, said "COREXIT in studies was shown to be twice as harmful to shrimp as an alternate dispersant called Dispersit," produced by Polychemical Corp. in New York. That's problematic for the huge Gulf shrimp industry, she noted. Meanwhile, according to test results compiled by the EPA, seven alternative dispersants are less toxic to shrimp than COREXIT and at least 14 alternatives are less toxic to fish.

Cufone noted that Dispersit is about twice as effective in breaking oil down as COREXIT and is also far less toxic.

If dispersants must be used in the Gulf spill, choosing the right one makes a big difference because "the dose makes the poison," Kendall said "We're watching the biggest ecological, toxicology experiment in our nation's history," he stated. "Underwater pools of oil have formed that are 20 miles long. And the mixture of chemicals-oil, dispersants and residue from setting oil on fire-presents new  threats to the sea bottom, the shore, marshes and the air."

More here - http://www.louisianaweekly.com/news.php?viewStory=2862

Contrast this with the use of booms, and oil/water separators, and other things designed to keep the oil from reaching shore or spreading.

Why 'experiment' with chemicals?

I listened on the radio one day to folks saying newly unemployed shrimpers and other boat people would have had lots of incentive to place and monitor booms to keep the oil away the coast - lots of motivation.  What motivation does NALCO have to stop the spill?

Same with the oil/water separators.  Why weren't they put into action?

It's like every emergency and non-emergency is put into profit mode for big business. 

H1N1 - make millions of vaccines that aren't used.  Price for US taxpayers?  $300 per dose.  Price for Chinese citizens?  $.50 per dose.

A vaccine to prevent breast cancer in older women...cheaper than mammograms?  Any long term studies on humans?

jmho