Hair Booms = before you host a Boom-B-Q, read this...

"Idea for making booms: Shear genius or hairbrained?"

By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY
May 12, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO — A tiny non-profit here thought it had an idea worth testing on the Gulf Coast oil spill: Try using booms created from old pantyhose stuffed with hair from pet and beauty salons to sop up the oil.

But neither the oil company nor other scientists put much stock in the idea. So now tens of thousands of "hair booms" are fast clogging the postal system and filling donated warehouses around the Gulf region.

Among the problems: It's unclear whether the volunteer-made booms are usable; they haven't been tested in an actual major oil spill; and BP, the oil company responsible for cleaning up the spill, hasn't returned the non-profit's phone calls.

Lisa Craig Gautier, 43, spent Tuesday fielding calls and e-mails from eager volunteers who are organizing "boom-B-Q" boom-making parties. She and her husband founded the group in their living room 12 years ago. Gautier says they've done "dozens" of tests using the booms, but they haven't been deployed in an actual spill or in anything like the conditions in the Gulf of Mexico, where 210,000 gallons of crude is flowing daily.

None of that mattered to Gautier on April 30. That day, she began talking with hair salons in the Gulf states about collecting hair to use to make the oil-absorbing booms. The idea hit the Internet and went viral. (snip)

Story and picture at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-05-12-oilspill-petfur_N.htm

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Don't people have any idea how big the Gulf of Mexico is?!? :shrug:
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Well...MAYBE we should GO AHEAD AND INUNDATE BP WITH HAIR BOOMS...they kind of look like turds.

Maybe link them and put them around BP headquarters?

:banghead:

are all over the sites I'm using to monitor the oil geyser. They are frustrated that they are not being taken more seriously and are generally kicking up quite a fuss.

Bless their hearts. Everyone feels so helpless and the waiting is so hard.

I rather like your idea re: BP headquarters. :toast:

for all who care.

I do think the hair booms could be used symbolically--as a statement--they express a collective concern in a very visible and literal way, much like the AIDS quilts etc.

Maybe Washington could use a few containment "booms" too...

:evilgrin:

Hanes has donated 500,000 pairs of stockings to the effort and Petco is collecting and delivering to a collection point in Alabama as much as 2,000 pounds/day of dog fur.

Before people go trashing an idea, maybe they should do some research first.

"Petco, which had begun to collect fur from its 1,000 salons on Friday, is now backing off. "While it's a good idea, it's not clear how exactly the booms, once they get put together, will get deployed effectively," spokesman Kevin Whalen says."

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The reporter seems to have done some research, & I wouldn't say she is trashing the idea. It seems to have trashed itself. Apparently these hair booms are filling warehouses and BP doesn't want them, so it's legitimate news. Maybe there will be an update on what happens to them. This is coming from an urge to help, I realize. But it's not based on anything scientific.

ALSO from the article:

"Gautier has been calling BP for days, but no one will tell her whether they can use the booms. The only official word came Sunday when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a fact sheet that said: "Recent reports of a need for hair are exaggerated and not helpful to the response effort."

Even if hair isn't as effective as advertised, it's a helluva lot better than pouring toxic chemicals into the sea to hide the problem.

Maybe they can try a kitty litter bomb. Or sew a bunch of sponges together.

Check out this page on NOAA website (Nat'l Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration)

http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/faq_topic.php?faq_topic_id=1

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A. There are three basic classes of absorbents to use for spill cleanup:

1. natural organic materials like peat moss, straw, hay, and sawdust.
2. mineral-based materials like vermiculite, perlite, and volcanic ash.
3. synthetic organic sorbents like rubber, polyester foam, polystyrene, and polyurethane.

"The last class of absorbents is most commonly used because these materials absorb more oil and are reusable. Also, peat moss, straw, hay, human hair, and duck feathers clog most skimmers (machines that pick up oil from the water surface). We think it's better to skim the oil and recycle it, rather than creating hazardous waste."

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The webpage has a lot of general info about oil spills and what is done to clean them up. It talks about dispersants.

I agree, the amount of dispersants they are using is bad. I guess they feel they have nothing to lose...the oil is more toxic :(

Just sayin'.

I'm wondering if any kind of booms (or skimmers) will be very effective, especially with all this dispersant they're using. Never mind what the boom is made of.

And nylon stockings made into ropes would not be the greatest for sea life either...

There's no good cleanup solution for this degree of damage IMO. :argh:

with comments from a scientist about the use of hair to clean up this huge disaster.

But don't take my word for it, call up a scientist, an ecologist or marine scientist
would be able to tell you what this hair boom effort is worth. The point is, people wanting to help would likely be better off putting their energy into something really useful.

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http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/05/gulf_oil_spill_solution_donate.php

According to some San Francisco non-profit called Matter of Trust, donating your hair can help clean up one of the worst oil spills in United States history. The Huffington Post, and plenty of other news media outlets, have recently run straight-faced stories on this "innovative solution."

Please don't shave yourselves yet, people.

Because it seemed slightly absurd that our hair might be an answer to an oil spill of this magnitude -- an estimated 210,000 gallons a day are leaking into the Gulf of Mexico -- we called our favorite bioremediation expert: Terry Hazen, the head of the ecology department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Sure enough, the idea that hair can make a dent in the Deep Water Horizon clean-up cracked Hazen up.
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"This hair thing sounds really, really amusing," he said. "If you shaved everybody in the United States, there wouldn't be enough hair to cover this oil spill."

It's not that hair doesn't work at all, he said. In fact, after the Cosco Busan spill, Paul Stamets demonstrated that in limited ways, hair (and mushrooms) can be effective. But "it can't be applied to a catastrophe of this size," Hazen said.