BP's Dispersant Disaster: Sweeping The Oil Under The Rug Has Vast Environmental Costs

THE SOLUTION TO POLLUTION IS NOT DILUTION!

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/05/24/24greenwire-secret-formulas-data-shortages-fuel-arguments-o-9112.html

As the quantity of dispersant that BP has sprayed on the spill surpassed 800,000 gallons last weekend, experts say the secret formulas, combined with the sparse water-quality data released by U.S. EPA, make an independent assessment of the dispersant strategy next to impossible.

Some scientists are calling for all dispersant use to be halted until the ingredients and effects are better understood. "The data is horrible," said Carys Mitchelmore, an environmental chemist and toxicologist at the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science. A co-author of a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report on dispersants, she has testified repeatedly on Capitol Hill over the gaping holes in the scientific knowledge regarding the chemicals. "There's two frustrations," Mitchelmore said. "One, I don't know what's in them, and secondly, I really hope they are running toxicity tests with all of these right now to get a more robust scientific data set."

The company responsible for containing the spill, BP PLC, continued to spar with EPA over the company's decision to rely on two types of Corexit -- proprietary dispersant formulas manufactured by Nalco Holding Co., which has close ties to both BP and Exxon Mobil Corp. "Until we know more about the dispersants, I'd follow up with BP and EPA and tell them to stop, stop," legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle told the Energy and Commerce Committee.

"It's not at all clear to me why we're dispersing the oil at all," said Carl Safina, president and co-founder of the Blue Ocean Institute. "It seems to me you would want it as thick and as concentrated so we can deal with it right there. We seem to be saying we're going to take this concentrated oil, and we're going to dissolve it. It's an out-of-sight, out-of-mind strategy. It's a PR stunt to dissolve this oil with dispersants. It's just to get it out of the way of the cameras on the shoreline."

http://www.bangordailynews.com/detail/144655.html

A marine toxicologist from Maine who traveled to New Orleans earlier this month to get a firsthand look at the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the effects of the chemicals used to fight it said she was horrified by what she saw. Dr. Susan Shaw of Brooklin, who accompanied a London Times crew to the gulf May 20-22, said the damage done by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is rivaled by the harm done by the dispersants British Petroleum is using to break up the viscous fluid. “We’re actually doing a pretty good job of poisoning the sea, and we’re calling it a chemical remedy,” Shaw said. ...

Shaw, who is one of the few experts who has swum in the spill to gauge its impact, said she saw an oil and dispersant mixture on May 21 and that the dispersants work. But they work too well, she said. Instead of the oil collecting on beaches and harming marine animals, it is being broken down into smaller globs that affect animals further down the food chain, such as phytoplankton, Shaw said.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” she said. “They’re definitely breaking up the oil and globs,” but smaller fish such as herring or anchovy eat the poisoned phytoplankton, and they become poisoned for larger animals who eat them. “My view from being down there is that we should not be using these dispersants in such unprecedented volumes,” she said. “What I see unfolding is that we’re going to lose these stitches in the food web … and that will devastate all the higher organisms,” Shaw said.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-05-25/business/ct-biz-0526-nalco-20100525_1_dispersant-chemical-spill/3

Scientists said other impacts aren't being considered. "I was blown away, surprised, that a material that could be used at this kind of scale, a Gulf of Mexico response plan, would approve the use of a material that you fundamentally can't know everything about," said Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund in North Carolina.

Rader said the sea surface, where most of the material is being applied, contains sea life at its earliest and most sensitive stage. Dispersing the oil, he said, could spread the impact into other ecosystems. The oil-chemical mix binding to particulate matter and sinking like snow, called "marine snow'' by scientists, can affect bottom dwellers. "I think there's a huge question about whether or not it even makes sense to be using dispersants at this scale, particularly on the bottom," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/business/energy-environment/13greenwire-less-toxic-dispersants-lose-out-in-bp-oil-spil-81183.html

BP PLC continues to stockpile and deploy oil-dispersing chemicals manufactured by a company with which it shares close ties, even though other U.S. EPA-approved alternatives have been shown to be far less toxic and, in some cases, nearly twice as effective. After the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and a deepwater well began gushing crude in the Gulf of Mexico three weeks ago, BP quickly marshaled a third of the world's available supply of dispersants, chemicals that break surface oil slicks into microscopic droplets that can sink into the sea. But the benefits of keeping some oil out of beaches and wetlands carry uncertain costs. Scientists warn that the dispersed oil, as well as the dispersants themselves, might cause long-term harm to marine life. ...

But according to EPA data, Corexit ranks far above dispersants made by competitors in toxicity and far below them in effectiveness in handling southern Louisiana crude. Of 18 dispersants whose use EPA has approved, 12 were found to be more effective on southern Louisiana crude than Corexit, EPA data show. Two of the 12 were found to be 100 percent effective on Gulf of Mexico crude, while the two Corexit products rated 56 percent and 63 percent effective, respectively. The toxicity of the 12 was shown to be either comparable to the Corexit line or, in some cases, 10 or 20 times less, according to EPA. ... "Why wouldn't you go for the lesser toxic formulation?" said Carys Mitchelmore, an assistant professor of environmental chemistry and toxicology at the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science. ...

Critics say Nalco, which formed a joint venture company with Exxon Chemical in 1994, boasts oil-industry insiders on its board of directors and among its executives, including an 11-year board member at BP and a top Exxon executive who spent 43 years with the oil giant. "It's a chemical that the oil industry makes to sell to itself, basically," said Richard Charter, a senior policy adviser for Defenders of Wildlife.

The older of the two Corexit products that BP has used in the Gulf spill, Corexit 9527, was also sprayed in 1989 on the 11-million-gallon slick created by the Exxon Valdez grounding in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Cleanup workers suffered health problems afterward, including blood in their urine and assorted kidney and liver disorders. Some health problems were blamed on the chemical 2-butoxyethanol, an ingredient discontinued in the latest version of Corexit, Corexit 9500, whose production Nalco officials say has been ramped up in response to the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Among Corexit's competitors, a product called Dispersit far outpaced Corexit 9500, EPA test results show, rating nearly twice as effective and between half and a third as toxic, based on two tests performed on fish and shrimp. ... Dispersit was formulated to outperform Corexit and got EPA approval 10 years ago, he said, but the dispersant has failed to grab market share from its larger rival. "When we came out with a safer product, we thought people would jump on board," he said. "That's not the case. We were never able to move anyone of any size off the Corexit product."

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-13-want-to-phase-out-a-hazardous-substance-dump-it-in-the-gulf

Corexit 9527A is the older product, and considered more toxic. According to its Material Safety Data Sheet, it contains a chemical called 2-butoxyethanol -- at a level of between 30 percent and 60 percent by weight (the public information on these products is maddeningly inexact). Since writing the post last week, I've come upon the entry for 2-butoxyethanol on the website of Haz-Map, a service of the National Library of Medicine that provides "information about the health effects of exposure to chemicals."

This is not charming stuff, according to Haz-Map:

Severe hemoglobinuria and changes in the lungs, kidneys, and liver are seen in mice after 7-hour lethal concentration studies. Volunteers showed no evidence of adverse effects other than mucous membrane irritation after 8 hour exposures to 200 ppm. ... For ethylene glycol ethers, there is limited positive evidence of spontaneous abortions and decreased sperm counts in humans and strong positive evidence of birth defects and testicular damage in animals.

Moreover, such effects seem to happen at low concentrations -- as low as 20 parts per million. So I asked Jackson and her crew to "drill down" (pun not intended, I promise) on just what sort of effect dumping hundreds of thousands of gallons of a substance that contains lots of 2-butoxyethanol would have on the Gulf. Jackson gave the floor to Paul Anastas, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Research and Development and the Science Advisor to the Agency. His answer surprised me. Rather than discuss the toxicity of 2-butoxyethanol, Anastas sought to assure us it was no longer in use -- because the Gulf cleanup crew had already dumped all of the Corexit 9527A it had in hand into the Gulf, and were now using only Corexit 9500. ...

At one point, Jackson said that the Gulf cleanup team had received a total of 500,000 gallons of dispersants, and had used 400,000 gallons by May 10. Another 805,000 gallons are on order, she added. Someone asked her how much of each dispersant -- 9500 and 9527A -- had been used. Jackson said she didn't know for sure, but she understood that use so far had been "roughly 50/50" between the two. If 9527A made up half of the volume of dispersants used by May 10, that means that something like 200,000 gallons of the dodgy stuff went into the Gulf. And we don't know whether more is on the way; Jackson said she had no information on the 805,000 gallons of dispersant on order.

much more ...

NY Times Article Now Scrubbed From NY Times Website

Also on Monday, Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, raised new questions about the use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil plume deep under the surface of the gulf. The Environmental Protection Agency has approved the use of a trademarked oil-dispersing chemical known as Corexit both on the surface and closer to the source of the leaking oil, at a depth of 5,000 feet.

In a letter to Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, Mr. Markey said that some formulations of Corexit had been banned in Britain because of harmful effects on sea life. More than half a million gallons of the dispersants have already been used in the Gulf, and hundreds of thousands more gallons are being prepared for use. “The release of hundreds of thousands of gallons of chemicals into the Gulf of Mexico could be an unprecedented, large and aggressive experiment on our oceans,” said Mr. Markey, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. “The information regarding the chemical composition, efficacy and toxicity of the dispersants currently being used is scarce.”

He asked E.P.A. to provide information on the effect of water temperature and pressure on the dispersant, a combination of solvents, surfactants and other compounds. He also requested detailed data on the subsea tests that led E.P.A. and the United States Coast Guard to approve its use a mile below the surface.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/science/earth/28workers.html?src=mv

News of the sick workers brought consternation on Thursday at a BP safety training seminar in Chalmette, La., for fishermen planning to take part in the cleanup. “Why are they using dispersants that are illegal in other countries?” asked one of the fishermen, who declined to be named, saying that BP had instructed the men not to speak to the news media. (Corexit is banned in Britain but approved for use in the United States and Canada.)

Several said BP officials had sought to reassure them about the safety of the dispersants during the morning session. “They say we don’t need respirators,” said another one, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

At the West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, La., where the seven workers were hospitalized, doctors could not say for sure what caused the problem. The first three workers were from a single boat, and one was sick enough that emergency services were summoned to airlift him off the vessel. The other two piloted the boat north to Venice, where an ambulance took them to the hospital. The other four in the same work crew were admitted later in the day. They said they believed that they had been exposed to dispersant spray, according to Dr. Robert Chugden, an emergency room physician at the hospital.

http://trueslant.com/allisonkilkenny/2010/05/28/allegations-emerge-bp-prevents-fishermen-from-wearing-respirators

AMY GOODMAN: What about respirators? Are people wearing respirators?

CLINT GUIDRY: No, ma’am. Having had prior experience, I know these people. They’re friends. They’re family. I bought respirators, and I brought them down to these people. And when they tried to wear them, the BP representatives on site told them that it wasn’t a dangerous situation, and they didn’t need to wear them, and if they did, they would be taken off the job.

AMY GOODMAN: If they wore respirators, they’d be taken off the job?

CLINT GUIDRY: Yes. …

AMY GOODMAN: But how does wearing respirators threaten BP? How do the workers, the cleanup crews, wearing respirators, how does that threaten BP?

CLINT GUIDRY: If you would do your research, the same situation occurred with Exxon Valdez over twenty years ago. It is a question of liability. The minute BP declares that there is a respiratory danger on the situation is the day that they let the door open for liability suits down the line. If they could have gotten away with covering this up, like they did in Alaska Valdez situation, like Exxon, they would not have to pay a penny for any kind of health-related claims.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/bp-had-alternative-less-toxic-dispersant-c

REP. JERROLD NADLER (D), NEW YORK: Who decided which dispersant to use? BP?

LAMAR MCKAY, PRESIDENT AND CHAIRMAN, BP AMERICA, INC.: I don't know the...

NADLER: You don't know?

MCKAY: I don't know the individual who decided which...

NADLER: I didn't ask the individual.

MCKAY: I don't...

NADLER: Was it the -- BP who decided, or was it the national -- the government who decided, or the national incident command?

(CROSSTALK)

MCKAY: I don't know. I don't know.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-spill-20100523%2C0%2C907236.story

BP has rebuffed demands from government officials and environmentalists to use a less-toxic dispersant to break up the oil from its massive offshore spill, saying that the chemical product it is now using continues to be "the best option for subsea application." ...

"While the dispersant BP has been using is on the agency's approved list, BP is using this dispersant in unprecedented volumes and, last week, began using it underwater at the source of the leak — a procedure that has never been tried before," the EPA noted last week, acknowledging that "much is unknown about the underwater use of dispersants."

http://www.fastcompany.com/1643601/epa-approves-use-of-harmful-chemical-dispersants-in-oil-spill

According to Sawyer, Corexit is also known as deodorized kerosene--a substance with health risks to humans as well as sea turtles, dolphins, breathing reptiles, birds, and any species that need to surface for air exchanges.

http://www.necn.com/05/27/10/Chemical-dispersant-used-in-Gulf-sparks-/landing.html?blockID=242732&feedID=4215

Cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is literally a pain in the neck says some workers-- now complaining of nausea, difficulty breathing, dizziness and severe headaches. Critics are worried exposure to a chemical being used to prevent oil slicks from coming ashore.

Dr. James shine is the senior lecturer of aquatic chemistry at Harvard University's school of public health. Shine says BP is using a controversial chemical dispersant to break oil into tiny particles that sink underneath the water's surface protecting--- the wetlands and its wildlife- but threatening animals on the seafloor. "The concern is you know the one they are using is on the more toxic end of the dispersants that exist.. ... We did it you know with the Exxon Valdez probably saying we've got to come up with something better and now we are here decades later doing the same thing."

http://www.mercurynews.com/peninsula/ci_15187813?nclick_check=1

There were a lot of lessons learned from the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989. One form of dispersant Corexit was used there too. Nineteen months after that spill, the dispersant was not only evident in the marine ecosystem, but mussels were still poisoned. And the effects of spreading the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were far and wide as they caused developing hearts of Pacific herring and salmon to fail. People exposed to Corexit suffered a number of long-term respiratory and other serious ailments. Research from Israel in 2007 clearly showed that dispersant kills coral reefs and significantly retards regrowth.

Florida is the only state in continental United States to have extensive (about 6,000) shallow coral reefs near its coasts, and most are located in the Florida Keys. These reefs range in age between 5,000 and 7,000 years old, and they are the third largest coral reef formation on Earth. Surrounding the corals are extensive beds of sea grasses. Between the reefs and the sea grasses are more than 500 species of fish, spiny lobsters, snow crabs, Caribbean manatees, American crocodiles, leatherback, loggerhead, Kemp's ridley and green sea turtles. ...

The solution to pollution is not dilution. Each time we lose one species, we impoverish our planet. Spreading cancer-causing poisons throughout a marine ecosystem from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean is not acceptable, especially since these lessons were learned at the expense of Prince William Sound and the Pacific Ocean.

http://themoderatevoice.com/73831/epa-orders-bp-to-cut-back-corexit-dispersant-on-gulf-oil-slick

The Environmental Protection Agency ordered BP to cut back by 50 to 75% of the oil dispersant Corexit Monday because they don’t believe the oil company’s word that it does not effect sea life. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the feds will conduct their own independent tests of the chemical in which 800,000 gallons have been sprayed on the Gulf’s oil slick. For reasons she did not explain, BP is allowed to continue releasing the dispersant on the source of the gusher 5,000 feet deep and 50 miles south of Louisiana. BP last week failed to comply with an EPA request to find an alternative dispersant which an irate Jackson said was “insufficient.” ...

“We are not satisfied that BP has done extensive analysis of other dispersant options,” Jackson said. “They were more interested in defending their original decisions than studying other options.” A federal lab in Florida will begin testing the dispersant’s effectiveness and toxicity. ...

The 800,000 gallons of Corexit (EC9527A) BP said it has dumped on the Gulf oil slick is manufactured by Nalco Co. of Naperville, Illinois. ... It reports its hazardous properties of butoxyethanol, organic sulfonic acid salt and propylene glycol. On humans, excessive exposure may cause injury to red blood cells, kidney or the liver. It is harmful by inhalation, in contact with skin and if swallowed which would include some sea life although the antidote is flushing with clean water. Nalco’s No. One customer is Big Oil.

http://www.protecttheocean.com/bp-epa-oil-spill

Early on, BP began spraying and injecting solvents into offshore waters. They claimed that dispersing the oil would be a good idea, better for the wetlands. Even then, their plot was in place. They knew that the truth was that the solvents would make the oil exponentially more toxic, (as would adding the solvent itself) but that didn’t matter. Dispersal solvents would see to it that a large portion of that oil never floated to the top or showed up at the shoreline. Why would they do that? Simple enough: If it doesn’t rise to the surface or wash up onto the shores, BP doesn’t have to pay to clean it up. ...

The solvents have seen to it that the oil doesn’t rise to the surface. Instead, long “plumes,” rivers of oil hiding between about 4000 feet down and just below the surface. How much oil? Just one of them is over 10 miles long and about a mile wide. How thick is anyone’s guess. ...

http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=382521

"Corexit 9527 is still stocked by various responders in various locations around the world. When the spill occurred, the Gulf response team brought in Corexit dispersants from the various stockpiles, some included 9527, some included 9500."

Whether the government agencies involved in the clean up have reservations about one version over the other isn't clear. But the overall effort was still a responsible thing to do, said Richard Eastman, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc. in Milwaukee.

"BP is in crisis mode and has a comfort level with Nalco and with Corexit," said Eastman. "So Nalco had to scrambled to deliver huge quantizes of that product that BP has asked for. They've never had to deal with that kind of volume before."

Eastman estimates that Nalco has so far sold about $40 million worth of Corexit to BP for the recovery mission. Government agencies, that are part of the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command, estimate about 670,000 gallons of the product have been used there since late April.

http://www.protecttheocean.com/gulf-oil-spill-bp

Oil is toxic at 11 ppm while Corexit 9500 is toxic at only 2.61 ppm; Corexit 9500 is four times as toxic as the oil itself. Sure, a lot less of it is being introduced, but that’s still a flawed logical perspective, because it’s not a “lesser of two evils” scenario. BOTH are going into the ocean water.

The lesser of two evils seems to be a product called Dispersit, manufactured by Polychem, a division of U.S. Polychemical Corporation. In comparison, water-based Dispersit is toxic at 7.9-8.2 ppm; Dispersit holds about one third of the toxicity that Corexit 9500 presents. Dispersit is a much less harmful water-based product which is both EPA approved and the U.S. Coast Guard’s NCP list. So why isn’t it being used?

We spoke with Bruce Gebhardt at Polychem Marine Products, asked him if Dispersit was being used in the Gulf Oil Spill situation. “Very little,” he replied. When asked why, the impression was that the government had used Corexit 9500 in the past, and was going with what they know — no matter how dangerous that might prove to be.

http://freeport.nassauguardian.net/national_local/15962901061525.php

She also expressed concern about what could happen to the coral on the sea bed, which takes hundreds of years to grow. "Apparently the consistency of this stuff is like a goop, so that could then potentially layer over all your corals and put like a slime type coating over the corals and they're going to die from starvation because they can't filter feed because then you've cut off their source of being able to draw in the water," she said. "So you've got a potential now of the coral reef being affected, and they're talking about 800, 000 gallons of dispersant that they've put in so far."

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/05/27/27622.htm

The Coast Guard saw to it that all crew members from the 125 fishing boats were evaluated by medical workers as a precaution. West Jefferson Medical Center spokeswoman Taslin Alphonso said the workers told doctors that they believe chemicals used to break up the oil made them sick. ...

Coastal fishermen expressed frustration at BP this week when it failed observe an order by the Environmental Protection Agency to stop using the Corexit dispersants and find a less harmful substitute by last Sunday night. As of Monday, when BP was still using the dispersant, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said BP can continue to use the dispersant, but asked BP to reduce the amount it uses, saying she believed BP could reduce the amount by as much as 80 percent. ...

Richard Charter, government relations consultant for Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund told Mother Jones last week that oil companies "want to make the visible part of the oil spill disappear -- for political reasons, limiting the liability to the spillers." But, Charter says, "If we were looking at food chain impacts and biomagnifications in the marine ecosystem, we probably never would have invented Corexit." ...

Oil companies designed dispersants to reduce the amount of oil washing up on land. That might spare BP the public relations nightmare of oil-coated birds washing up on Louisiana's shorelines, but scientists say Corexit and the like will simply push the problem underwater. The chemicals, marine toxicologist Dr. Riki Ott says, have "the potential to cause intergenerational harm" to marine life.

http://www.examiner.com/x-51590-Cultural-Issues-Examiner~y2010m5d27-Gulf-oil-spill-named-worst-in-US-history-Louisiana-Congressman-Charlie-Melancon-cries-at-hearing

BP has been, and still is, spraying the area with chemical dispersants that Federal Government officials had ordered the company to scale back on. BP continued to spray the dispersant, Corexit 9500 without so much as a slap on the wrist from government agencies. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said in a press conference, "we are making environmental tradeoffs" and are "deeply concerned" about potential side effects.” She also expressed her belief that BP can reduce the dispersant quantity by as much as 80 percent. Corexit 9500 has been rated more toxic and less effective than other chemicals on the EPA’s list of 18 approved dispersants. The dispersant contains petroleum distillates and propylene glycol. It’s now reported that these chemicals have caused cleanup crews to become ill with symptoms of dizziness, headaches and nausea while working on boats off of the Louisiana coast.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0525/EPA-girds-for-a-fight-with-BP-over-dispersants-in-Gulf-oil-spill

The Obama administration's frustration with BP over the dispersant issue has been mounting since this weekend. By Sunday, it had become clear that BP would not heed an EPA directive to find an alternative to Corexit, the dispersant that the EPA rates as less effective and more toxic than as many as 12 other products. ...

But the makers of Dispersit – a product rated by the EPA as twice as effective as Corexit and one-third less toxic – refute these claims. They said Monday that they could meet BP's demand and that the ingredients of their dispersant are public.

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/05/28/28greenwire-we-have-nothing-to-hide-oil-dispersant-maker-s-42602.html

The manufacturer of the oil-dispersing chemicals being used by BP PLC in the Gulf of Mexico said today that injecting the dispersant on a still-gushing wellhead was unprecedented and should be carried out with ample testing. "That's a new approach," said Erik Fyrwald, CEO of Nalco, whose dispersants are marketed under the name Corexit. "Our belief is, because it is a new approach, it needs to be done with a lot of testing to make sure there are no unfavorable impacts, and we encourage that."

http://www.yourottawaregion.com/news/local/article/822840--oil-dispersant-a-new-challenge-for-perth-wax-researcher

Mounting concerns about the dispersant being used to break up thousands of gallons of crude oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico have also temporarily scuttled Perth resident Willy Nelson's efforts to help the clean up.

Nelson, an environmental wax researcher who has been demonstrating methods to soak up oil using wax for more than four decades, was set to fly to Louisiana to demonstrate his techniques last week. But BP and those involved in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup have dumped so much oil dispersant into the water that it has changed the composition of the oil. “It is emulsified,” Nelson said. “The dispersant turns it into molasses...This is really skunky, sticky, nasty stuff.”

At press time, Nelson was awaiting the delivery of a sample of the dispersed oil, or “skunk oil,” as he’s calling it, to experiment with before heading to Louisiana to try it out on a larger scale.

http://www.kansascity.com/2010/05/28/1978204/bp-systemic-failure-endangers.html

"The organizational systems that BP currently has in place, particularly those related to worker safety and health training, protective equipment, and site monitoring, are not adequate for the current situation or the projected increase in cleanup operations," Michaels said in the memo. "I want to stress that these are not isolated problems. They appear to be indicative of a general systemic failure on BP's part, to ensure the safety and health of those responding to this disaster."

Michaels added that BP "has also not been forthcoming with basic, but critical, safety and health information on injuries and exposures." ...

Little-noticed data posted on BP's website and the Deepwater Horizon site show that 32 air samples taken near workers have indicated the presence of butoxyethanol, a component listed as present in an oil spill dispersant used by BP, known as Corexit. The Environmental Protection Agency considers it toxic.

Looks like a lot of info there.

K&R.

:grr:

We don't learn from anybody's mistakes, ever. Not even our own. It's a point of national pride.

In fact, although this isn't highly publicized, the commandment "Thou shall not kill" has been superceded by "We shall never learn", sung to the tune of "We shall overcome". True story.

edit: forgot :argh:

selfish a$$holes. (BP + oil companies)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7134581.ece

“This is terrible, just terrible,” says Dr Shaw, back on the boat. “The situation in the water column is horrible all the way down. Combined with the dispersants, the toxic effects of the oil will be far worse for sea life. It’s death in the ocean from the top to the bottom.”

Dispersants can contain particular evils. Corexit 9527 — used extensively by BP despite it being toxic enough to be banned in British waters — contains 2-butoxyethanol, a compound that ruptures red blood cells in whatever eats it. Its replacement, COREXIT 9500, contains petroleum solvents and other components that can damage membranes, and cause chemical pneumonia if aspirated into the lungs following ingestion.

But what worries Dr Shaw most is the long-term potential for toxic chemicals to build up in the food chain. “There are hundreds of organic compounds in oil, including toxic solvents and PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), that can cause cancer in animals and people. In this respect light, sweet crude is more toxic than the heavy stuff. It’s not only the acute effects, the loss of whole niches in the food web, it’s also the problems we will see with future generations, especially in top predators.”

http://www.easybourse.com/bourse/international/news/837381/us-rep-markey-no-good-choices-on-dispersant-for-gulf-oil-spill.html

U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) said in a statement that the government has "no silver bullets" with which to clean up the spill caused by BP PLC's (BP) "failure to assure the safety of its drilling operations."

Markey asserted that the dispersant--Corexit--that BP is currently using is "more toxic" to marine life than other options, but he stressed that officials know "almost nothing" about the potential impact of any of the chemicals on the Gulf's marine environment.
Officials know even less about the potential for these chemicals to enter the food chain and harm humans, he added. Markey, who chairs the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said he met with independent scientists Friday for a briefing on the spill's potential impact on the Gulf.

"What is most frightening about the long-term effects of the oil and the dispersant chemicals isn't what we know, it is what we just don't know," said Markey.

http://www.pnj.com/article/20100524/OPINION/5240301/1006/NEWS01/Editorial--Fight-oil-spill-with-less-toxic-chemicals

What we don't need is anything that makes the situation worse, which from all expert opinions, the oil dispersant is doing just that. The EPA first allowed BP to spray the dispersant over oil slicks on the surface of the Gulf — during good weather and water conditions. On May 15, the agency allowed BP to inject the chemicals deep underwater, directly at the site of the gushing oil. Several scientists have said that they were surprised that the EPA gave BP permission to use the dispersants at all on the Gulf floor because their use in deep water had never been attempted.

Experts contend that the chemical dispersants used following the explosion of the offshore oil rig have the potential to cause just as much, if not more harm, to the environment and humans coming into contact wit it than oil possibly would left untreated. Like household detergents that break up grease in the wash, dispersants can clear an oil slick by breaking the crude into tiny droplets that fall beneath the water's surface. Oil treated with these chemicals spreads through the water more easily and threatens delicate fish eggs and other fragile sea life.

The long-term effect of dispersants on the marine ecosystem has not been definitively determined, but the EPA's decision to err on the side of caution is the right move to protect aquatic life under these troubling circumstances.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37282611/ns/gulf_oil_spill

But the chemicals, which are being used in unprecedented volumes and in previously untested ways, may come with a big tradeoff, scientists say. That’s because no one can accurately predict how large the impact will be on the mammals, fish and turtles that inhabit the open ocean. “It’s a whole new ball game,” said Ted Van Vleet, a professor of chemical oceanography in the college of Marine Science at the University of South Florida. “People are totally unsure as to how it is going to affect the ecosystems."

Dispersants themselves are toxic. But a bigger concern in the scientific community is what happens in dispersing the oil, which is far more hazardous to living creatures. ... “The fact that (dispersants) remove oil from the surface doesn’t mean it’s not toxic,” said Van Vleet. “It moves oil down into the water column, where other marine animals are exposed to it. ... It trades one ecosystem for another.” ...

“There are a bunch of things in the deep sea that we don’t know very much about,” said Ed Overton, professor in the Marine Sciences Department at Louisiana State University. “What happens if those resources are damaged? How does that affect the ecology of the Gulf? It’s a crapshoot … an educated crapshoot.” ... If the oil on the ocean floor is not degraded by bacteria, the danger is that it will remain toxic for much longer than it would near the surface — potentially lingering for years instead of weeks or months — during which time it could be carried to deep coral reefs that provide shelter and nurseries to many species of fish. ... The final third of the ingredients are not publicly disclosed because the information is considered proprietary.

The same day, however, The New York Times reported that a group of scientists aboard the research vessel Pelican had identified massive plumes of subsea oil — some as big as 10 miles long and 3 miles wide. The article said that scientists on the ship speculated that heavy use of dispersants had contributed to creation of the plumes.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127105863

"And so, you know, spraying may protect some things near the surface but they're still going to be releasing this stuff into the stream of oil coming off the ocean floor, and nobody knows what happens when you do that. This is really the first time. So, that's going to distribute maybe a more diluted form, but it's going to be all over the Gulf, because the stuff is coming up through 5,000 feet of water and has a chance to get into all the currents that take it everywhere." ...

"The thing to remember is that dispersants take oil places it's not otherwise going. So, what that means is you bring oil, which is itself very, very toxic, to other places. So, when you put oil to the surface, you might bring oil to, say, eggs that are just beneath the surface. And so by not spraying on the surface you might protect them. On the other hand, so now you're putting this into the column of oil coming off there and it's going to go far, far away. So, tiny creatures we don't even know about may be exposed and we have no idea what that's going to do."

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/05/toxic-soup-gulf

Jacqueline Savitz, director of pollution campaigns at the oceans advocacy group Oceana, says it's a lose-lose situation: Both the chemicals and the oil in the water are environmental nightmares. "These chemicals are toxic. It would probably be illegal to dump them in the ocean under any other circumstances," she says. "It's a trade-off between oiling the shoreline and oiling the ocean." The dispersants may protect the coastline and its ecosystems, but the chemicals and the oil remnants will affect sea life, like the blue fin tuna (which is currently spawning in the region), shrimp, oysters, and crabs. The combination of dispersed oil and chemicals is actually more toxic than the oil alone, and can also spread out farther in the Gulf, says Savitz. "Whether or not you think dispersants are a good idea depends on whether you're a shore bird or a fish."

Dr. Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist and former commercial fisher in Alaska at the time of the Exxon Valdez spill, has been in the Gulf area meeting with fisherman and communities to discuss the potential impacts. While Exxon used dispersants to clean up the Alaska spill, which have had long-term impacts on herring and salmon, what's going on in the Gulf now is unprecedented, she warns. "We've never released them at this rate before, so much, so fast," said Ott. She said lab tests on the toxicity of the dispersants don't reflect the reality of how these agents can affect an ecosystem. The use of the chemicals in such large volumes, she said, "has the potential to cause intergenerational harm." ...

The bigger issue, says Oceana's Savitz, is that the dispersants are used to enable offshore drilling, with little attention given to their potential impact until a major spill necessitates their use. Oil companies will point to the chemicals as a potential option for mitigation in the event of a spill. "We're enabling risky offshore drilling that we shouldn't be doing in the first place," said Savitz. "If we deemed the toxicity of dispersants as unacceptable, it would be harder for them to get approval."

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/05/epa-bp-dispersants

But environmental experts have warned that Corexit could add to the ecological disaster in the Gulf rather than alleviate it. Oil companies designed the dispersants to reduce the amount of oil hitting land. That may spare BP the PR nightmare of oil-coated birds washing up on Louisiana’s shorelines. However, as scientists such as marine toxicologist Dr. Riki Ott point out, BP's chosen dispersants will simply push the problem underwater. The chemicals, says Ott, have "the potential to cause intergenerational harm" to marine life. Corexit has been banned in the United Kingdom due to environmental concerns.

" want to make the visible part of the oil spill disappear—for political reasons, for limiting liability to the spillers," says Richard Charter, government relations consultant for Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund. "If we were looking at food chain impacts and biomagnification in the marine ecosystem, we probably never would have invented Corexit."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100524/sc_livescience/whyisthegulfoilslickred

The reason for the reddish coloring of the oil slick has to do with how the oil mixes with water, but scientists are puzzled as to why the colors coating the Gulf water are so bright.

"We believe that the reddish brown color is indicative of the formation of a water-in-oil emulsion, called a mousse," said Edward Overton, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University. "These oil slicks typically have colors other than black, but with this oil, the colors are fairly vivid."

:grr:

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/05/25/27551.htm

Many environmental experts have said that an oil cleanup might cause more harm to the coastline than just leaving it there, so the only viable option is to keep the oil away. A caller from St. Tammany Parish broke into tears Monday on a talk show on radio WWL. "All they're trying to do is destroy the wetlands so they can get the mineral rights to all of whatever is under" the wetlands, the woman said.

The Obama administration questioned BP's competence on Sunday, when Salazar told reporters he was "not completely" confident BP knows what it's doing. For local residents, BP's violation of the Sunday night deadline to stop using the toxic dispersant felt like a slap in the face. "Are they just going to continue spraying this stuff until someone sends them to jail?" Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser asked on WWL radio Monday night.

Nungesser said he and other coastal parish presidents are fed up with BP and the federal government. Nungesser said he intends to take matters into his own hands, whether the Corps of Engineers issues his parish the emergency permit he applied for on May 13 or not, and whether BP decides help keep oil out of the wetlands or not. ...

BP has been using Corexit during the oil spill catastrophe in far greater quantities than ever before in U.S. history. Jackson said other chemicals the EPA wanted BP to consider appear to be less toxic and more effective than Corexit. "My concern is they appear to be going out of their way to find problems with these other chemicals," Jackson said.

http://scienceblogs.com/speakeasyscience/2010/05/a_lethal_concentration.php

This suggests that crude oil is less acutely poisonous than chemical dispersants. But here's the really interesting finding in that terrific little study. Adding a dispersant - specifically Corexit 9500 - made the oil more poisonous. A lot more poisonous. The "dispersed" oil had an LC50 of 317.7 ppm, making it more than 11 times more lethal in its effects. The study found a similar worsening for white shrimp, although not quite as dramatic. "Dispersed oils were more toxic than crude oils," noted the report.

... But as it turns out there are plenty of other studies raising very similar warnings and they go back quite a ways. A report in the journal Environmental Toxicology a decade ago concluded that "LC50 values indicate that dispersed oil combinations were significantly more toxic to these organisms than .. crude oil." Another study, this time of snails and amphipods reached exactly the same conclusion.

... But don't you wonder what we're doing out there in the fragile environment of the Gulf, whether we're reducing the spill damage or just turning the whole area into one ever-more poisonous bowl of toxic soup? And don't you wish our officials gave any indication that they knew more about it than we do? I love doing this kind of research but in this case I'd much rather have our country's so-called regulators waving the LC50 red flag ahead of me.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/lgreer/video_facts_and_science_of_dis.html

The most important questions people should be asking about the dispersants are NOT which one is least toxic while sitting on the shelf (except with regard for worker protection, which merits great attention). The important questions concern:

* Will any of these dispersants actually be effective? Will they abate a great percentage of the smothering oil plume from reaching the shoreline or will they have only a trivial effect? We are flying blind on this one because we have no experience with applying dispersants at depth.

* What is the toxicity of a chemically dispersed plume? When the dispersant mixes into the crude oil, it creates a mixture that chemically and physically is neither oil nor dispersant -- it is a new "formulation" of mixed compounds. Is this mixture more or less toxic than what we started with? And is a Corexit dispersed plume chemically distinct from a Dispersit dispersed plume? We are flying blind on this one because we have not required toxicity testing data on dispersed plumes.

* Will chemical dispersants keep the oil plume from naturally degrading over time? Will these chemicals slow down or accelerate the process of biodegradation? Again we are flying blind on this one because we have not adequately studied the biodegradation of any chemically dispersed plumes.

Last question: Why are we flying blind on all these important questions?

http://www.energyboom.com/policy/bp-and-damage-done

Although the Army Corps of Engineers issued a partial permit Thursday to test the effectiveness of sandbar restoration as a defense against the oil, Nungesser explained that for five weeks, BP dismissed efforts to protect Louisiana’s coastal marshes. “They’ve singlehandedly hijacked the operation and refused engineering assistance from over 60 top-notch engineering experts. Versabar was ready to deploy their heavy lift salvage system known as the “bottom feeder” to the rig site. There, they could trap, collect, treat, and sequester the oil, but the top-brass at BP wouldn’t allow it. BP has taken over the Gulf of Mexico and we’re doing nothing to stop them.”

Why would BP resist measures designed to intercept the offending oil before it rolls onshore? One explanation is that penalties will be based on spill volume. The more oil captured, the more oil measured, and the more costly BP’s future damages become. Exxon saved billions of dollars maintaining that no more than 11 million gallons of oil escaped from their Valdez tanker in 1989. Exxon’s low-ball estimate, although later discredited by expert testimony, denied victims appropriate compensation. Arrogance, greed, and denial seem to be common traits among global oil executives. ...

In addition to widespread economic hardship, there are medical concerns and there is anger over BP’s insistence that the dispersants they are showering into the Gulf are safe. “BP is spraying Corexit 9500 as high as 2,500 feet into the air and the winds are driving it onshore. It smells like insecticide to me and friends as far away as Baton Rouge can smell it,” Kennedy hammered.

http://www.theind.com/lead-news/6292-net-loss

It’s not only oil that is cause for concern when it comes to Gulf seafood. John Tesvich, chairman of the Louisiana Oyster Task Force, is equally dismayed by the toxicity of the dispersant BP has used for a month to break up the oil slick. “They’ve used more dispersant than any other spill, and we’re definitely concerned about it. Dispersants of those kinds, they are definitely not recommended.” Tesvich notes that none of the dispersant, Corexit, has been sprayed near the state’s oyster beds. “There’s nowhere that you’ll see that they will use it anywhere near the interior waters,” he says. ...

Swett says the uncertainty is getting to him. “The difficult thing is knowing exactly where the oil really is, and then there’s that dispersant they’re saying is so bad. I really don’t think we’re going to know for some years to come. I fear it’s a catastrophe,” adds Swett, who is resorting to the traditional Louisiana solution for disasters. “I want to get in a bar and drink.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30shaw.html

As the boat entered the slick, I had to cover my nose to block the fumes. There were patches of oil on the gulf’s surface. In some places, the oil has mixed with an orange-brown pudding-like material, some of the 700,000 gallons of a chemical dispersant called Corexit 9500 that BP has sprayed on the spreading oil. Near Rig No. 313, technically a restricted zone, the boat stopped and I (wearing a wetsuit, with Vaseline covering exposed skin) jumped in.

Only a few meters down, the nutrient-rich water became murky, but it was possible to make out tiny wisps of phytoplankton, zooplankton and shrimp enveloped in dark oily droplets. These are essential food sources for fish like the herring I could see feeding with gaping mouths on the oil and dispersant. Dispersants break up the oil into smaller pieces that then sink in the water, forming poisonous droplets — which fish can easily mistake for food.

Though all dispersants are potentially dangerous when applied in such volumes, Corexit is particularly toxic. It contains petroleum solvents and a chemical that, when ingested, ruptures red blood cells and causes internal bleeding. It is also bioaccumulative, meaning its concentration intensifies as it moves up the food chain. The timing for exposure to these chemicals could not be worse. Herring and other small fish hatch in the spring, and the larvae are especially vulnerable. As they die, disaster looms for the larger predator fish, as well as dolphins and whales. ...

Yes, the dispersants have made for cleaner beaches. But they’re not worth the destruction they cause at sea, far out of sight. It would be better to halt their use and just siphon and skim as much of the oil off the surface as we can. The Deepwater Horizon spill has done enough damage, without our adding to it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7783656/BP-disaster-worst-oil-spill-in-US-history-turns-seas-into-a-dead-zone.html

From Mr Lensmyer's boat, 60 miles south of New Orleans, the only signs of life were a few seabirds circling above and the occasional porpoise skirting sheens of oil. The astringent smell, a chemical-like odour that stung the throat, only added to the unsettling feel. ...

"This is a disaster on many levels," said Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), after touring the area. "About 90 per cent of gulf fishing is dependent on these wetlands. Fish spawn here, blue crabs and other sealife which are a key part of the food chain rely on the marshes, the oyster and shrimp populations rely on healthy wetlands." ...

Yet the BP spill has often seemed like a disaster in abstract. There have been relatively few of the classic post-spill images of helpless oil-coated birds coated or dead fishing floating belly-up. And the mass use of chemical dispersants - in itself, another threat to the fragile ecosystem - has partially broken the slick, creating the residue of distinctive chocolate-brown globules. ... Deep-water cameras sent out on an NWF charter boat last week showed a similar sub-aquatic scene - waters and reefs that should be teeming with fish were near devoid of life but thick with globules of oil. Indeed, scientists believe much of the plume has never even reached the surface.

"When things are this bad, the larger fish get out of town," said Dr Martin O'Connell, director of fish research at the University of New Orleans. But the oysters and shrimp in polluted areas will not have escaped, nor will smaller fish and other organisms that rely on the wetlands for survival. "The impact on the food chain will be felt for many years."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ybenjamin/detail??blogid=150&entry_id=64308

There is only one safe way to take the crude oil from the surface of the ocean. Vacuum suction it out of the water's surface. In 1993, there was a massive oil spill near Saudi Arabia. They vacuumed the oil out. How come we're not trying it?

The massive oil spill kept under wraps for close to two decades and first reported by Esquire, dumped nearly 800 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf, which would make it more than 70 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill. Saudi Aramco employed a fleet of empty supertankers to suck crude off the water's surface. The suction method was able to clean up the spill and salvage 85 percent of the oil. ...

Just because the crude oil is under water does not mean it's not there. We need to ask the question on why oil suction by oil tankers is not being used?

So why don't we use the physical suction method of the crude oil despite the fact it is proven effective? Oil tankers are equipped to perform this cleanup method. Is it cost control? Are tankers not available? Your guess is as good as mine but we need to ask the question.

How do you even begin to have the gall to make the case the government is in charge when the company tells it to fuck off and when our government comes back meekly with "please use less then" and they say "we'll think about it"?

When it goes like that then BP is in charge with veto power over the President of the United States and Congress, regardless of what anybody says to the contrary until the government asserts it's supremacy.

of its petrol from BP? :think:

Send some of these factoids to your congresscritters, folks. No more dispersants, period.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/30/1655237/already-endangered-sea-creatures.html

As the magnitude of BP's oil spill becomes clearer, scientists fear that the volume of oil, the depth of the leak and the chemical dispersants the company is using will combine to threaten a vast array of undersea life for years. At risk are such endangered species as Kemp's ridley sea turtles and the Atlantic bluefin tuna, as well as the Gulf of Mexico's 8,300 other creatures from plankton to birds. The contamination, some say, is likely to undo years of work that brought some wildlife, such as the brown pelican, back from the brink of extinction. ``It's probably going to be one of the worst disasters we've ever seen,'' said Paul Montagna, a professor of ecology at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi.

``Instead of creating a typical spill, where the oil goes to the surface and you can scoop it up, this stuff has been distributed throughout the water column, and that means everything, absolutely everything, is being affected,'' he said.

Further complicating the toxic effects of the oil, the chemical dispersants -- used as never before a mile below the surface -- have changed the crude in ways that will keep it from breaking down. The dispersants have modified the oil, keeping it in a form that's ``much gooier and much oilier, and that has a lot of us worried, because it means the stuff is not going to degrade very easily,'' said James H. Cowan Jr., a professor of biological oceanography at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Because of the high pressure deep underwater, it's harder for dispersants to break up the oil, he said. ``A lot of us suspect that we may be dealing with this for decades,'' Cowan said.

BP's use of the dispersants also is likely to keep the damage hidden. Larry Crowder, a professor of marine biology at Duke University, said the dispersant, Corexit, had kept much of the oil off the beaches, making it ``harder to get `Film at 11' about the effects.'' Many species that are killed by the oil in the water will die and sink out of sight. ``That may be the preference of the oil companies: to keep the damage out of sight, out of mind,'' Crowder said.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/oil-spill-seeps-into-the-heart-of-america-1.1031416

A second group of scientists, using satellite images and video from the seabed camera, estimated that the discharge could be 70,000 barrels a day. Much of this is underwater, broken up into smaller droplets by chemical dispersants, but no less damaging to the marine ecosystem. Researchers from the University of South Florida found a submerged plume of oil six miles wide and 22 miles long.

Dispersants have never been used so deep, nor in such huge quantities. When the Environmental Protection Agency demanded that BP stop spraying Corexit and switch to something less toxic, the oil company ignored the order.

“The name of the product they’re using is Corexit. We call it ‘hides it’ because that’s what it does,” Steiner said. “The stuff is toxic, even more so in combination with oil. It’s basically transferring the damage from the surface down into the water column. It’s cosmetic. It’s theatre, to make people think ‘They’re responding, they’re doing their best’.”

http://trueslant.com/jeffmcmahon/2010/05/30/bp-top-kill-fails-lmrp-cap/

That long-term effort will include the continued use of unprecedented volumes of hazardous chemical dispersants that submerge the oil and break it into globules, preventing or reducing a surface slick. At the spill site, BP will focus on a new effort to capture much of the leaking oil using a version of the top-hat strategy, but company officials admit they can’t catch it all.

“We think the LMRP cap has the potential to capture the great majority of it. I don’t want ot say 100 percent but a great majority of it with that design,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s Chief Operating Officer. “If we can capture flow at the seabed, if we can fight this thing effectively at the surface and use subsea dispersal, we can actually minimize the amount of oil on the surface and minimize the amount of oil on the shore.”

BP and government officials were careful to give their change of strategy a positive spin, stopping short of admitting they had lost the battle to stop the leak in the short term. But Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry made it clear both parties were falling back on the exhaustive effort to disperse the oil, prevent it from coming ashore, and remove it up from beaches and marshes. “When you think about the volume that’s been spilled already and you look at the amount that’s reached the shore, we really have done a tremendous amount of good work in fighting this as far offshore as possible,” Landry said. “We will continue to keep that as our charge.”

BP has used nearly a million gallons of a dispersant called Corexit, spraying it on the ocean’s surface and injecting it into the plume of oil escaping from the damaged pipe near the sea floor. The material’s safety data sheet warns it can cause damage to the blood, liver and kidneys. (See video below of “dispersed” crude oil under water.)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=top-kill-fails-to-top-flow-of-oil-2010-05-29

In the meantime, 170,000 gallons of dispersants have been injected beneath the sea surface to break up the oil, which has been flowing now for 40 days, though Suttles noted that BP would not be able to remove any of the dispersed oil in sub-surface plumes. BP continues to use the dispersant Corexit, which can include toxic solvents such as 2-butoxyethanol. To date, 930,000 gallons of various versions of Corexit have been used, both at the surface and near the well.

Concern mounted Saturday over possible health effects of dispersants BP continues to spray.

http://www.bnd.com/2010/05/29/1275187/gloom-grows-as-bps-top-kill-effort.html

Two contract cleanup workers were airlifted to West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, La., on Friday night after suffering dizziness, headaches and chest pains on boats operating about a mile south of the coast. One of the men told a hospital administrator that he had been helping to burn off oil when he became ill. He said he had been sprayed with dispersant the day before. He declined to speak to a reporter, saying he feared losing his job, the administrator said.

The two men were expected to be released Monday. A hospital spokeswoman said no toxicology tests had been conducted. A news release from the Unified Command, a joint information center of BP and the federal government, said that at the time of the men's complaints, no controlled burning of oil was under way. It also said that aerial dispersants were used in the area of the burn fleet "but as per safety restrictions, no dispersants are deployed within two miles of any vessel or platform." ...

Daniel Sain, of Hopedale, La., said he was laying boom last week when he came across a rust-colored area of water with a pungent smell. Afterward, he experienced headaches, nausea and sinus irritation, he said. "I don't smoke cigarettes or anything, but I'm coughing like a smoker," he said, adding that no medical personnel were available when he docked.

Even residents not working on the spill reported unaccustomed ailments. Lisa Louque, a restaurant worker, said she felt dizzy and disoriented and couldn't breathe several days after walking on a nearby beach. She said she stayed at Lady of the Sea General Hospital in Cut Off, La., for a day and a half. "I didn't touch the oil," she said. "I didn't know I really shouldn't have been out there."

http://www.neworleans.com/news/local-news/404561.html

"We believe this product will solve the oil problem without creating new problems that are just as bad as not worse than the problem we are trying to solve," said SACO President Andrew Amelang.

BP is receiving a lot of criticism over the dispersant it's using, especially after several fishermen became ill this week.

"With what BP is using, I would move if I were down there. With what I'm using, I'd bathe in it. You can." Lathrop said.

Lathrop says this solution is harmless as he demonstrates on his own tongue. SACO made a trip to Grand Isle this week to meet with BP, but never got the chance.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N28202801.htm

A large undersea cloud of dissolved hydrocarbons discovered this week near the Gulf of Mexico oil spill raises fresh questions about toxic chemicals used to fight the spill and their environmental impact. David Hollander, a University of South Florida oceanographer, headed a research team that discovered the six-mile (10-km) wide "oil cloud" while on a government-funded expedition aboard the Weatherbird II, a vessel operated by the university's College of Marine Science. "We were collecting samples down to two miles (3 km) below the surface," Hollander told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

It was the second major deepwater plume discovered since the April 20 blowout at BP's Macondo well. Hollander said it was believed to stretch all the way from the wellhead to the site where it was first detected on Tuesday, in an area off the continental shelf south of Mobile, Alabama. Hollander said scientists had yet to determine whether the dissolved hydrocarbons, found in oxygen-depleted waters, were the result of chemical dispersants used deep below the Gulf surface to break down oil from the leaking well. But he said the contaminants -- which could eventually be pushed onto the continental shelf before shifting slowly down toward the Florida Keys and possibly out to the open Atlantic Ocean -- raised troubling questions about whether they would "cascade up the food web."

The threat is that they will poison plankton and fish larvae before making their way into animals higher up the food chain, Hollander said. The underwater contaminants are particularly "insidious" because they are invisible, Hollander said, adding that they were suspended in what looked like normal seawater. "It may be due to the application of the dispersants that a portion of the petroleum has extracted itself away from the crude and is now incorporated into the waters with solvents and detergents," he added.

He said dispersants, a cocktail of organic solvents and detergents, had never been used at the depth of BP's well before, and no one really knows how they interact physically and chemically under pressure with oil, water and gases. "We think there could be both short-term and long-term implications ... There's a lot of unchartered territory that we're moving into with this oil spill. On the surface they're very readily or actively used and their behavior is well understood. That's not the case at all with their use in the subsurface and especially at a mile (1.6 km) deep. A very-large-scale experiment is being conducted and we don't know the implications of it."

very crucial information and topic,

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/group_wants_ban_on_chemical_di.html

A marine toxicologist who was a veteran of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and Louisiana fishermen have called for President Barack Obama to order BP PLC to quit using a chemical dispersant in the Gulf of Mexico.

Riki Ott, whose livelihood in the fishing industry was ended by the Valdez spill, said Monday that Venice-area residents are exhibiting symptoms of exposure to the oil and the dispersant, including headaches, nose bleeds, sinus problems and rashes.

Ott says similar symptoms hit Alaska residents after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989.

http://scienceblogs.com/speakeasyscience/2010/05/spin_baby_spin.php?utm_source=sbhomepage&utm_medium=link&utm_content=channellink

This comment comes from Natural Resources Defense Council staff blogger Regan Nelson: "By dispersing oil into deeper waters, away from human eyes, dispersants can also have the welcome public relations effect of making the spill appear smaller."

video of the dispersant caused muck: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s2RetnHUUU

http://blog.al.com/live/2010/05/mobile_scientists_warnings_abo.html

Crozier said it was clear to him in his conversation with the BP scientist that using dispersant underwater was a forgone conclusion and that the BP scientist was not interested in Crozier's scientific opinion. "He spent the first five minutes lecturing me about the dispersant toxicity. I told him I wasn't worried about that. I was worried about the toxicity of the dispersed oil. He didn't want to address that," Crozier said.

The Press-Register found a short online biography for Peter Carragher, head of discipline for exploration, on BP's website. The biography described Carragher as a geologist. "He was lecturing me on my lack of knowledge about the marine environment. I told him we were most concerned about the oil getting in the food web if they sink it with dispersants," Shipp said. "When we started talking about the sediments and the food web, they turned off. They were all about chemical reactions and that sort of thing. They just kept saying, 'EPA approved it.'"

The scientists said that when the oil was allowed to come to the surface, many of the most toxic components -- hexane, benzene, other volatile gases -- were evaporating. But when the oil is trapped underwater through the use of dispersants, those toxic chemicals also are trapped in the water. Plus, the breakdown of the oil by aquatic microbes robs the water of oxygen. "The concerns about a hypoxic (low-oxygen) issue are very real," Crozier said. "Whether it happens, how fast it happens, I can't predict, but the idea of that much microbial activity using oxygen, that is totally predictable."

Crozier said he fears that a decision was made to protect beaches in the short term at the risk of jeopardizing the long-term health of the Gulf.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19325

Which brings us to what may be BP's greatest aide in furthering this aim: the chemical dispersants. BP's plan to spray the dispersants on the leak from the source -- as well as dump them from planes flying above -- will effectively prevent oil from reaching the shore in the same form that the notorious slicks did in famous spills like the Exxon Valdez.

Despite the fact that nobody is sure exactly how toxic the stuff is, or how being deployed on such a large scale will effect ecosystems, it will have at least one effect: it will delay public outrage by masking the apparent extent of the spill's damage. After all, BP must know how damaging the Valdez spill was for Exxon's image -- some people still conjure up pictures of oil-coated birds at the mention of the brand. But make no mistake -- chemical dispersants will disrupt ecosystems in a massive way, even if you never see the true effect with your own eyes.

http://www.gulfoildisasterrecovery.com/web/index.asp?mode=full&id=650&ReturnId=index.asp?mode=archive

"It's very scary," said John Williams, executive director of the Tarpon Springs-based Southern Shrimper Alliance, which has written to federal officials to challenge the use of chemical dispersants on the oil. "They say it's the lesser of two evils, but how do we know it's the lesser evil?"

Fishermen say they are afraid the dispersants could create a series of widespread dead zones in the gulf, contaminating or killing marine life. "Our entire seafood industry in the gulf is at risk here," said Williams, whose group represents shrimpers from North Carolina to Texas.

No one but the Texas-based manufacturer, Nalco Energy Services, knows exactly what's in Corexit 9500, the dispersant BP has been spraying on the slick. The company says it may pose a risk for eye and skin irritations and can cause respiratory problems, but "no toxicity studies have been conducted on this product." ....

"It's kind of disturbing," said Robert McKee, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer who's part of a consortium of attorneys representing the United Commercial Fishermen's Association and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. "There's no way of knowing how many generations of sea life and how many generations of human life are going to be affected."

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2010/051810Lendman.shtml

According to University of Georgia researcher Samantha Joye, "There's a shocking amount of oil in the deep water, relative to" what's visible on the surface, the tip of a big and growing iceberg, this one containing oil. "There's a tremendous amount of oil in multiple layers, three or four or five layers deep in the water column." ...

It's why Defenders of Wildlife Richard Charter (a marine biology expert) says using them is "a giant experiment (because their) chemical toxicity (in) many ways is worse than oil."

Because of the spill's size over a vast area, BP has available around one-third of the world's dispersant supply, so imagine the amount toxicity to be unleashed, with its clear risks to sea life and humans. Former University of Alaska marine conservation professor Richard Steiner and other experts wonder how much the public is being deceived by coverup and denial. The combination of oil and dispersant toxins will kill millions of organisms they contaminate, what Richard Charter explains saying: "You are trying to mitigate the volume of the spill with dispersant, but the price you pay is increased toxicity," or, in fact, making a horrific disaster worse.

As for BP and the Obama administration, dispersant use is all gain and little pain, the idea being to break up as much oil as possible, let it sink, be out of sight and declare success, when, in fact, we may end up with a far greater catastrophe that's our problem, not theirs. That's how a business-government cabal works, stealing our wealth, civil liberties, and health for profit and dominance while claiming they're on our side.

http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/05/21/many-scientists-believe-that-toxic-dispersants-could-be-more-dangerous-than-the-oil-itself/

Many of the human health problems evolving from the BP oil disaster are insidious and unknown. The effects of the oil are the most pressing and most obvious. This is mostly a risk for those living near the coast, and workers cleaning up oil as it washes ashore. But the effects from exposure to the dispersants BP is using to “clean up” oil also pose a serious health threat. In fact, some believe the chemical toxicity of what’s in the dispersant could be more dangerous than the oil itself. ...

The most obvious comparison to the burgeoning BP crisis is the response that was mounted after the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989. Eleven million gallons of oil emptied from the tanker, exposing cleanup workers to oil mist that was much higher than government-approved limits. Thousand of workers came down with “the Valdez Crud,” a condition that caused respiratory problems and flu-like symptoms. Though most of these were dismissed as simple cases of colds and seasonal flu, many of the exposed workers developed much more severe complications. Unfortunately, there were not proper monitoring entities in place to track this development.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gulf-oil-spill-dispersants-have-potential-to-cause-more-harm-than-good-93424899.html

The chemical dispersants being used to break up the oil leaking into the gulf following the explosion of British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig have the potential to cause just as much, if not more, harm to the environment and the humans coming into contact with it than the oil possibly would if left untreated. That is the warning of toxicology experts, led by Dr. William Sawyer, addressing the Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery Group, a group of lawyers working to protect the rights and interests of environmental groups and persons affected by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The group represents the United Fishermen's Association and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN), among others. ...

"The dispersants used in the BP clean-up efforts, known as 'Corexit 9500' and 'Corexit EC9527A,' are also known as deodorized kerosene," said Dr. Sawyer. "With respect to marine toxicity and potential human health risks, studies of kerosene exposures strongly indicate potential health risks to volunteers, workers, sea turtles, dolphins, breathing reptiles and all species which need to surface for air exchanges, as well as birds and all other mammals. Additionally, I have considered marine species which surface for atmospheric inhalation such as sea turtles, dolphins and other species which are especially vulnerable to aspiration toxicity of 'Corexit 9500' into the lung while surfacing." ...

"Toxicity of the petroleum products is increased when it is dissolved into the water by dispersants," said Co-Counsel Robert McKee, Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery Group. "In essence, this activity is making aquatic organisms more exposed to chemicals' harm. The attempt to make these floating tars and oils disappear from view by the use of dispersants increases the likelihood of poisonous effects in these oil polluted waters."

Mr. McKee added, "The use of dispersants, without knowing the cascade of toxic events which may flow from the practice, mandates that those who may be forced to prove their losses in a court of law obtain competent and environmentally knowledgeable legal representatives who can establish the pre-damage baseline ecology now, in order to compare to post-oil spill contamination effects seen later. Without that immediate effort, victims who did not seek that type of early assistance may lose their ability to prove a full accounting of their rightful compensation for losses they actually sustain. The use of dispersants not only hides the amount of oil actually being discharged from view, but also serves to undermine damage proof for the unwary victim who chooses to wait to see what is going to happen."

methods they'd come up with and submitted to BP to help clean the mess. One guy, in particular, had a product made from sphagnum moss that you sprinkle on the slick. It absorbs the oil and then you can rake it up. The stuff did such a good job in the fish tank there was no oil left in the water. An added benefit was the bacteria in the moss that would feed on the crap. A good cheap and environmentally friendly product. Another guy had a new kind of barrier to protect the shoreline. It actually absorbed the oil like a sponge. He's actually been manufacturing it since the leak began in order to have enough stock to make a difference. BP, of course, is pretty much blowing these people off. No money to be made off of moss.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/beyond-top-kill-procedure-052710

With all the proper attention being paid to the top kill effort to cap the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico, and the dedication of BP's operational assets that that has required, a very large and looming matter is being given less attention than it deserves, and that is: the oil already in the water, in large concentrations (or "plumes") and migrating, either toward coastline or to the ocean floor. Last Tuesday, I asked Coast Guard Commander Mary Landry whether any efforts to recover the oil deeper in the water were being contemplated or devised, and the answer was no.

But late last week, it came to our attention that for the first time, BP was giving serious attention to a possible solution to this growing problem which involved the use of empty supertankers to essentially vacuum the oil from the water using the enormous pumping capacity of these vessels. ... We have spoken to other seasoned energy professionals, as well — including legendary Houston oilman Matthew Simmons — who also urge the deployment of this strategy to prevent the massive amount of oil already in the water from either washing ashore or contaminating the bottom of the Gulf.

Today, along with the promising news about the top kill, comes more sobering news of a newly detected giant plume — twenty-two miles long, six miles wide — stretching toward Mobile Bay, Alabama. Just off the bay, in the town of Coden, a community organizer named Zack Carter contacted us immediately after our first supertanker report to find out how the South Bay Communities Alliance could help mobilize support and protect the Alabama coast. We spoke to Mr. Carter this afternoon, and with this latest news he has intensified his supertanker efforts, including enlisting Alabama Secretary of Agriculture Ron Sparks — a candidate for governor who has now organized a committee of Alabama legislators to prepare for the disaster.

I don't believe the measly 50 million bucks or so is why they use Corexit. That is not worth the shitstorm it's causing.

EPA tells them to back away from it, they say no - no alternative WITH ENOUGH SUPPLY.

Well...who knows the exact amounts of poison being used?? And how much is being used under water?

Keeping that under wraps would certainly be compromised had they used the large quantities of a better alternative that were sitting close by. Manufacturer must not be in their pocket.

:grr:

STOP releasing dispersants. NOW. It is crazy to add more poison to the Gulf. Dispersants do nothing to assist the environment in naturally cleaning the oil; they just prevent (mostly) the ugly pictures of birds covered in pure black crude. Dispersants prevent the water surface being coated with a continuous, thick layer of crude, instead breaking it up into smaller globs. It does allow crude to somewhat mix with water to produce the goop that looks like chocolate ice cream, but that is no progress for the Gulf and it's creatures. Dispersants are just a toxic PR stunt, and the government needs to order BP to cease and desist immediately.

EPA sent a sternly worded letter to BP telling them to stop using their toxic dispersant, and BP said NO. End of story.

It is past time for 'I'm in charge' Obama to order BP to stop putting toxic poison into the Gulf. And send the Navy to forcibly stop BP from injecting toxic dispersant, if that's the only way to stop it.

It is the only thing they can do to hide the extent of the oil. They will deny the existence of plumes while they break them apart with the dispersants.

http://chronicle.northcoastnow.com/2010/05/31/elyria-pilot-flying-anti-oil-missions

Saunders’ unit has flown 86 missions over 28,000 acres of water, where they spray a chemical called Corexit 9500 from 100 feet above the water onto the oil below. The chemical breaks up oil slicks and hastens breakdown. “It causes the oil to break up into droplets and that allows the environment to break it down quicker over time,” Saunders said. “It also causes (the oil droplets) to sink. We spray far away from shore so the oil’s not sinking on sensitive areas like coral and shrimp.”

Saunders said it’s one way to keep the oil from contaminating the shoreline. Although oil is already washing up on Louisiana’s coastline, it hasn’t made landfall elsewhere yet. “We were initially spraying east of the source, but since that time the oil slick is actually flowing more toward the west and northwest so we’ve shifted where we’re working,” he said.

The flight crews look for brown or black oil floating on the surface. Reddish oil means emulsification has begun and the Corexit won’t be that effective, Saunders said. “The oil is pretty far-spread,” Saunders said. “Once it comes up, it tends to break into long bands of oil and slicks. It’s not one continuous oil slick.” ...

“It’s just wider-spread than you initially imagine,” he said. “Luckily, it hasn’t spread too far on the coast. It’s bad enough, but it hasn’t hit Mississippi or western Florida yet. It’s going to have a long-term effect.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/05/31/2010-05-31_echoes_of_sept_11_as_cleanup_workers_complain_of_illness.html

As if the BP oil spill couldn't get grimmer, there are fears that the chemicals used to break up the oil might be more harmful than the sticky crude itself. In a dark echo of the World Trade Center cleanup, fishermen helping to skim and boom the drifting oil have complained of nausea, dizziness, headaches and chest pains. Several have been hospitalized.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson ordered BP last week to reduce the amount of Corexit it was using to disperse the spill and to find a less toxic replacement. BP said there isn't one. Millions of gallons of the stuff have been sprayed into the Gulf of Mexico, helping to keep the oil off beaches but turning it into a sludgy goo that sinks and drifts below the surface, killing fish and coating reefs. Asked on CBS Sunday if the chemical is harmful, White House energy adviser Carol Browner said, "It is being studied."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/31/oil.spill.order/

In an affidavit, Wunstell wrote he started experiencing severe headaches and nasal irritation on May 24. Over the next few days, he also developed nosebleeds, an upset stomach, and aches. On Friday, Wunstell was airlifted to West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana, where he remained hospitalized Sunday. Eight other workers were brought to the hospital this week and were all released. "We need to start protecting these guys," said Jim Klick, Wunstell's lawyer. In his affidavit, Wunstell described his experience at the hospital. "At West Jefferson, there were tents set up outside the hospital, where I was stripped of my clothing, washed with water and several showers, before I was allowed into the hospital," Wunstell said. "When I asked for my clothing, I was told that BP had confiscated all of my clothing and it would not be returned."

The restraining order requests that BP refrain from "altering, testing or destroying clothing or any other evidence or potential evidence" when workers become ill. ...

Corexit, a dispersant, is being sprayed into the Gulf to break down the oil. The safety data information sheet from the manufacturer states that people should "avoid breathing in vapor" from Corexit, and that masks should be work when Corexit is present in certain concentrations in the air. BP has not supplied workers with masks when they work near the oil and dispersants. "We're been carrying out very extensive air quality since early on in this exercise, to make sure that we have working safe conditions, and thus far not found situations where there are air quality concerns that would require face masks," MacEwen said.

He added that workers who want to wear masks are "free to do so" as long as they receive instructions from their supervisors on how to use them. According to Guidry from the shrimpers' association, BP told workers they were not allowed to wear masks. "Some of our men asked, and they were told they'd be fired if they wore masks," he said.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8276210#8281993



Anymore resident "debunkers" want to keep comparing this to the msds warnings about sand and sucrose?

:mad:

Thank you for the time you spent pulling so much information together in one place.

This video has a film from 1989 (from the TEXAS WATER COMMISSION!!)... when they first used these oil eating microbes that ELIMINATES the oil in the water. Save for fish & fowl (& humans).

I'd say screw asking permission at this point...get some of these microbes and start spraying the wetlands & the beaches......

Hey,maybe Kevin Costner would help :shrug:

Of course BP's oil would be gone, but....gee, wonder if that's why they don't want this solution being used....say bye to profits. Bastids.



Youtube link

"The Texas Land Office and Texas Water Commission successfully used 'oil eating' microbes to clean up large oil spills in just weeks. Microbes hunt down and eat the toxic oil and leave only a biodegradable waste that is non-toxic to humans and marine life. Marshland and beaches were pristine again in just weeks---not years like the Exxon Valdez spill. This is the answer to save the seafood industry and all the precious creatures we are about to kill."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iudojq7qxuc_24IJuR8xUED_8PWQD9G1TLHO0

Researchers have said they have found at least two massive underwater plumes of what appears to be oil, each hundreds of feet deep and stretching for miles. Yet the chief executive of BP PLC - which has for weeks downplayed everything from the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf to the environmental impact - said there is "no evidence" that huge amounts of oil are suspended undersea. BP CEO Tony Hayward said the oil naturally gravitates to the surface - and any oil below was just making its way up. However, researchers say the disaster in waters where light doesn't shine through could ripple across the food chain.

"Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that," said Prosanta Chakrabarty, a Louisiana State University fish biologist. ...

Responding to Hayward's assertion, one researcher noted that scientists from several different universities have come to similar conclusions about the plumes after doing separate testing. ... "This is just a giant experiment going on and we're trying to understand scientifically what this means," said Roger Helm, a senior official with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. ...

An estimated 910,000 gallons of dispersants - enough to fill more than 100 tanker trucks - are contributing a new toxin to the mix. Containing petroleum distillates and propylene glycol, the dispersants' effects on marine life are still unknown. What is known is that by breaking down oil into smaller droplets, dispersants reduce the oil's buoyancy, slowing or stalling the crude's rise to the surface and making it harder to track the spill. Dispersing the oil lower into the water column protects beaches, but also keeps it in cooler waters where oil does not break down as fast. That could prolong the oil's potential to poison fish, said Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "There's a school of thought that says we've made it worse because of the dispersants," he said.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51654

As oil continues gushing from the ocean floor into the Gulf of Mexico, with no sign of stopping until a new well is finished this August, scientists, environmentalists and local residents are beginning to reckon with the reality of a massive annihilation of sea creatures and wildlife. Dead animals are already washing up on shores. Birds have been found dying in pools of oil and dispersant, which have taken over their marshland habitats. ...

The EPA admits the impact of the oil spill - and the unprecedented use of toxic dispersants to break up the oil - on wildlife is unknown. "We're still deeply concerned about the things we don't know. The long-term effect on aquatic life is unknown," EPA Secretary Lisa Jackson said in a conference call with reporters this week.

The agency says will require rigorous autopsies and necropsies to determine whether the animals are in fact dying because of the oil and no other reason. It says soil and air sampling do not show dangerous levels of contaminants so far. "They're saying it's really not clear - it's a safe thing to say. As a scientist, one doesn't want to overreach and reach erroneous conclusions," Blum said. However, he added, "from a real world perspective, going down, seeing what's happening and understanding the ecology of the system, we're facing immediate effects of exposure. We're sampling the goop. There's lots of speculation of what could be in this goop, we'll look for dispersant chemicals as well as what else might be in there. BP has thrust upon us one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time." ...

Blum says it's easier to separate oil from water than it is to separate oil from the marshlands, which he described as a "sponge". Locals worry a hurricane this season could be the nail in the coffin for marshlands already teetering on the brink of destruction.

http://workinprogress.firedoglake.com/2010/05/31/bp-ceo-sickened-cleanup-workers-probably-have-food-poisoning

Corexit, BP’s preferred petroleum-based chemical “dispersant” used by the company, caused lifelong illnesses when used to break up and clean oil in the Exxon Valdez spill. Now 600,000+ gallons of Corexit has been dumped from the skies by BP since the spill, with a constant spray of Corexit aimed at the oil gushers 5,000 feet below sea level.

Being near the oil last week on the shore of Louisiana was enough to make myself and Ivan Oleander nauseous when the wind was right. These fishermen are boating through thick coats of oil on the open waters – “as thick as peanut butter,” one fisherman told me – with planes dumping dispersants from the sky at the same time.

It’s obvious that this is a toxic stew that would make anyone sick. Throw in the facts that BP tells its hired fishermen that they do not need protective gear because there’s no health risks, and it’s clear BP is ignorant, lying, or worse. Because if you ask Tony Hayward, it’s just food poisoning.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/816749--oil-cleanup-crews-report-dizziness-nausea

Louisiana fisherman Gary Burris said he felt “drugged . . . it was like sniffing gasoline” after exposure to the gushing oil fouling the Gulf. BP has sprayed more than 800,000 litres of dispersant into the Gulf since an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20. George Barisich, president of United Commercial Fisherman's Association, dismissed the Coast Guard report as a “pack of lies” and said at least nine fishermen had been treated in hospital. Dozens more, he said, kept working although they were sick. “I warned them. I said this was dangerous and would sicken us. I asked them for respirators, gloves, plastic sleeves, and we're only getting them now from volunteer groups, not from BP.”

“These are the exact symptoms that you could expect from overexposure to crude oil and to the chemicals that are being used out on the cleanup,” said Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist and activist who worked on the cleanup in Alaska after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. The dispersants, she says, compound the health risks created by exposure to crude oil. “This is like throwing kerosene on a fire,” she said.

Several Louisiana fisherman have contacted her to describe illness ranging from sore throats to burning headaches and skin rashes. ...

By August, the oil would almost certainly get into the Loop Current that moves clockwise around the Gulf, said Larry Crowder, a professor of marine biology at Duke University. From there, it would take a week to 10 days before it got to the Florida Keys. A few weeks later, the Gulf Stream would carry it to North Carolina. Given the volume of oil building up in two months, “It could go anywhere,” he said.

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/afp/us-oil-spill-could-last-for-weeks-officials-warn/378071

Scientists and local fishermen believe BP's use of the dispersant Corexit has caused the oil to sink to the bottom of the sea, where it will not weather and degrade naturally. ...

Currie said BP was continuing to "work with the EPA on the issue of dispersants" but would keep using Corexit until an alternative solution was found that is "available, effective and meets low toxicity limits. "We are using less dispersant, at the direction of the EPA," he added. ...

Meanwhile, Louisiana Senator David Vitter called for a military-style chain of command to handle the crisis, saying the procedure has been bogged down in red tape. "We need the federal response to really get with it and go on a wartime footing and we need a military-style chain of command where orders are given and executed immediately," Vitter told local radio. ...

"It's all just smoke and mirrors," New Orleans resident Danielle Brutsche told AFP. "What they're doing now, trying to cap the leak, I think they're just doing it to distract us so it looks like they're doing something while they build the relief wells," she said.

I wish you kept a DU journal, I would certainly follow it (and so would many others, I'm sure). It's just a very helpful tool offered by DU that allows to keep track of good info; I personally wish more people utilized it.

Thanks for the thread and all the good work, again. :thumbsup:

It is truly horrific to watch tragedy this unfold over a period of weeks and to then discover that BP's "cure" for its disaster is an even worse disaster on all levels except its own PR and legal liability.

Nobody ever seems to be minding our hen house.

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

Weeks into BP's Gulf spill, scientists questioned the company's decision to use dispersants on a wide scale and in particular its choice of COREXIT. On its own, COREXIT 9500 can be four times as toxic as oil, according to product evaluations. And of 18 dispersants approved earlier by EPA, twelve were found to be more effective on southern Louisiana crude than COREXIT, EPA data show. Kendall said he was very concerned that EPA hadn't assessed risks to the Gulf earlier from BP's massive dispersant use. And in contrast with EPA statements, he is particularly worried about underwater injections. "LC 50 studies have shown that COREXIT is toxic to young marine and other aquatic life," he noted. In toxicology language, a Lethal Concentration 50 rating means that a chemical can kill at least 50 percent of a sample population.

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."

An experiment conducted in the late 1990's by Nyman and other LSU researchers on soil from many of the state's tidal freshwater marshes found that dispersants mixed with oil reaching marsh soils were more toxic to fish, crustaceans and benthic invertebrates than undispersed oil for months after arriving in the soil. Benthic invertebrates are small, growing organisms that live at the bottom of the marsh. Nyman said "it appeared in our experiments that COREXIT 9500 was toxic to microbes in the marsh soil that eat the oil." And in another experiment with salt marsh soils, Dr. Nyman found that dispersed oil biodegrades, or was eaten by oil microbes, much more slowly than non-dispersed oil. ...

A concoction of oil and dispersants is already hovering over corral beds, like the Pinnacles south of Louisiana. And Kendall said the mixture is getting into the Loop Current, which heads to south Florida-where ancient corral reefs could be devastated. With hurricane season approaching, the presence of chemicals in Gulf Coast waters frightens him. Winds from a big storm will push the dispersed oil mixture around, and that could be catastrophic for the salt-and-fresh or brackish-water balance of Lake Pontchartrain, he warned. The lake has only recently been judged safe again for swimming after industrial and farm waste was brought under control. ... Lanctot said the use of "dispersants in the Gulf is a huge, unplanned and not very well-controlled experiment." He added that it's anybody's guess how dispersants will effect the Gulf ecosystem as it tries to recover after the oil well is plugged.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/27/AR2010052704033.html

"God knows what kinds of exposures people are getting," said Edward Overton, a professor of environmental chemistry at Louisiana State University. "There are lots of things in oil that you wouldn't want to be exposed to." ...

But at least one senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency questioned the official reassurances, noting that none of the monitoring data had been released publicly. He likened the response to previous toxic waste disasters and the World Trade Center cleanup, which left workers with long-term respiratory problems despite repeated official claims that workers did not need respirators because the working conditions were safe.

"It's unbelievable what's going on. It's like deja vu all over again," said Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA's office of solid waste and emergency response. "We saw this on the Exxon Valdez. We saw this with Love Canal. We saw it with 911. How many times do we have to see this? There's no way you can be working in that toxic soup with getting exposures."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/31/AR2010053103113.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

I have no doubt that out near the wellhead, the flow of oil is abundant and overwhelming. The environmental tragedy has been well documented, by my colleagues who have been there as well as by other journalists. But within 15 miles of the shore, the worst oil spill in U.S. history is like a really suspenseful horror movie: scary because you can't see the whole monster but you get enough glimpses to know that it's around. ...

More dramatic for me, actually, was what I didn't see in the marshes: life. No crabs, no fish, no birds wading or flying overhead. Not even any bugs, and that wasn't only because I had slathered on Deep Woods Off insect repellant. Thousands of plankton and baby shrimp may have been dead right before my eyes, but I couldn't see them. Even the tar balls that litter the beach look like pebbles, innocent and natural, until someone tells you there are no pebbles on that beach.

Many of the scientists down here seem terrified. They all fear the unknown, and so little is known. They wonder what the oil and dispersant are killing down deep in the water column, where we'll never find out until one day there are no more something-or-others. The huge underwater plumes scare them because there is no historic model for such a thing. They worry about what would happen to the region's complicated food web if, say, an entire year's worth of shrimp dies in the vulnerable larval stage. They stare at puddles, wondering if they are seeing foam from normal phosphates that wash onto the beach all the time or foam residue from dispersant.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=21383

The reason for the different estimates on how much oil has leaked is money. Under the US Clean Water Act, BP could be fined up to £3,000 for every barrel of oil gushing into the Gulf. If its lower estimates are accepted it will save BP millions of dollars. So it was not just arrogance that led Tony Hayward, the boss of BP, to claim, “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

BP won’t even say how much oil it thinks is in the field it was exploring. It claims this is commercially sensitive information. ...

The main method used to “clean up” the spilled oil is chemical dispersant. Oil company crews are injecting the surface of the oil slick with toxic dispersant chemicals, which are designed to break up the oil. This can do more harm than good. It hides the extent of the catastrophe by dividing the oil into smaller parcels that sink to the seafloor. The Gulf of Mexico is filling with globs of heavy, black oil that will be harder to clean up – and will be carried to shore on currents and tides for decades to come.

BP is pumping a dispersant called Corexit – which it helped develop – into the sea. The US government told the company to stop using Corexit as it is more toxic than competing products, but BP has ignored this. ... Marine toxicologist Riki Ott said the chemicals used by BP can wreak havoc on the body and even kill. “The volatile, organic carbons, they act like a narcotic,” Ott said. “At high concentrations, we learned in Exxon Valdez from carcasses of seals and sea otters, it actually fried the brain brain lesions.”

They probably hope to get the liability set before the full impact becomes known. Don't wait,

Expropriate without compensation. k&r

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/48816

On Saturday, the New York Times brought the world’s attention to the discovery by a team of researchers on the the vessel Pelican that there are large underwater plumes of oil emanating from the Deepwater Horizon spill. Remarkably, the response of the government to the attention focused on this discovery has been to tell the researchers to stop granting interviews with the press. At the same time, the blog on which the researchers had been providing updates has also fallen silent since Saturday.

Pensacola television station WEAR filed a report (video at the link) on the oil plume and broke the news about the scientists being muzzled by the government:

"Over the weekend, a research crew from the University of Southern Mississippi found evidence that there are 3 to 5 plumes… About 5 miles wide, 10 miles long and 3 hundred feet in depth.

But after giving that information to the press, the lead researcher now says he has been asked by the federal government… Which funds his research… To quit giving interviews until further testing is done."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/01/bp-oil-spill-wildlife

As oil continues gushing from the ocean floor into the Gulf of Mexico, with no sign of stopping until a new well is finished this August, scientists, environmentalists and local residents are beginning to reckon with the reality of a massive annihilation of sea creatures and wildlife. Dead animals are already washing up on shores. Birds have been found dying in pools of oil and dispersant, which have taken over their marshland habitats. ...

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0531/rep-rebukes-bp-chief-denying-existence-oil-plumes/

At the University of Georgia, scientists have established a Gulf oil blog to help the public track their latest findings. The very day that BP's CEO claimed there were no oil plumes, Dr. Samantha Joye reported their team had seen one with their own eyes. "One of the strangest things about these deepwater plumes we’ve been tracking is that we see a strong CDOM signal but there’s been no visible oil in the deepwater," she wrote. "That changed today: we saw oil in the deepwater. We sampled a station about a mile south of our previous stations (you can get our position and our ship track on www.marinetraffic.com, just look for the R/V Walton Smith in the Gulf of Mexico sector) and we saw the most intense CDOM signals that we’ve seen so far."

The team took samples of the plume from under and above, and two from within. Their conclusion is undeniable and supported by independent research.

http://scienceblogs.com/speakeasyscience/2010/05/out_of_sight.php?utm_source=networkbanner&utm_medium=link

... This despite the fact that independent researchers from at least four universities have identified underwater plumes of oil using research boats, submersible vehicles, and even sending divers into the plumes. The University of South Florida reported a plume of near transparent, oil-infused water stretching some 20 miles from the site of the oil ring. Similar results have been reported by the researchers from the University of Georgia, the University of Missippippi, and Louisiana State University. Although maybe he was just trying counter the sense of depression that seems to be resulting from those encountering underwater plumes? "Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that," Prosanta Chakrabarty, a Louisiana State University fish biologist, told the Associated Press. ...

But beyond the physics of deep water spills, BP itself may also be creating these underwater plumes by its heavy use of chemical dispersants to break up the slick of oil on the surface. As countless studies show, as dispersants break the oil into tiny particles, those the fragments tend to sink below the surface where - if all goes to plan - they are engulfed by oil-digesting microbes and degraded into more harmless materials.

As one industry group, the International Tankers Association, states: "If dispersion is successful, a characteristic brown plume will spread slowly down from the water surface a few minutes after treatment."

The creation of dispersed oil plumes isn't exactly a secret to our government either. For instance, here's a handy document created by our own National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): The Dispersant Application Observer Job Aid. And - surprise - it includes includes photo after photo of plumes created by spraying disperant onto surface oil.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703406604575278930475888458.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLTopStories

Ms. Sebelius issued her letter the same day that two crewmen on a boat conducting controlled burns of the oil far out in the Gulf were treated after reporting chest pains. Two days earlier, federal authorities recalled all 125 boats working to fight the spill near St. Bernard Parish, a coastal Louisiana community, after a handful of workers on boats in the area reported conditions including nausea, headaches and chest pains. ...

Eleven men working to clean up the spill have been treated at West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, La., about 75 miles from Venice, said Taslin Alfonzo, a spokeswoman at the hospital, which long has specialized in treating oil-industry workers. The patients were admitted with symptoms including dizziness, nausea, severe headaches and chest pain, and have been discharged, Ms. Alfonzo said. Doctors at West Jefferson have said that the symptoms appear to be caused by "a combination of some sort of chemical irritant and dehydration," she said. Doctors diagnosed one of the 11 oil-spill workers with "chemical exposure." ...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gOII1AlNaDtzJV4Rg9E01F6mI_IA

Already, marshland has been swamped with thick black crude and reddish, sponge-like clumps that one scientist thought was oil mixed with dispersant. ...

n addition to oil sheen visible on the surface of the water in some places, and the thick, dark slime that has washed up in parts of the wetlands, researchers have found large plumes of oil deeper underwater in the Gulf.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=128632§ionid=3510203

Apart from the concerns raised about the environmental impact of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, many say chemicals used to fight the spill are toxic. ...

"EPA and the US Coast Guard are taking steps that could reduce the volume of dispersants applied in the Gulf. While we do know dispersants are less toxic and shorter-lived than the oil, much remains unknown about their impact on the environment when used in these unprecedented volumes," the statement said.

University of South Florida oceanographers, however, have discovered a 10-km wide "oil cloud" in the northeast of the wellhead, about 35 kilometers to the northeast, which is believed to be the result of the used chemical dispersants. "It may be due to the application of the dispersants that a portion of the petroleum has extracted itself away from the crude and is now incorporated into the waters with solvents and detergents," David Hollander said onTuesday, adding that it was the second major deepwater plume discovered since the explosion at BP Plc's Macondo well 43 days ago.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/06/01/27704.htm

BP says it has no idea how much oil remains under the broken wellhead at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and it denied the existence of giant underwater plumes of oil. The oil company claims that if those plumes do exist, BP scientists are studying whether they should be a concern, but that the plumes are not from BP's use of chemical dispersants to sink the oil. BP officials also claimed that the nine oil cleanup workers who have been hospitalized might have contracted food poisoning; it denied the workers' claims the dispersants made them sick.

"The oil is on the surface. There aren't any plumes," BP CEO Tony Hayward told The Associated Press.

Marine scientists last week reported the discovery of a second giant plume, deep beneath the Gulf's surface, believed to be oil and stretching 22 miles northeast from BP's gushing wellhead. The thick mass is headed toward Mobile, Ala., where currents from an underwater canyon currents feed marine life in the waters off Florida. Scientists fear these oil clouds will create giant dead zones in the Gulf by suffocating marine life and poisoning tiny creatures at the bottom of the food chain. Some speculated that the giant underwater plumes are one result of BP's unprecedented use of chemical dispersants. BP has sprayed more than 990,000 gallons of dispersant into the Gulf of Mexico since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2010/05/bp-official-resists-defining-legitimate-claim.html

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) pressed Willis repeatedly to define “legitimate.” He asked, for example, whether BP would compensate people who, hypothetically, might be injured by the chemical dispersant BP is using to reduce the impact of the oil spill. “Is that a valid claim?” Nadler asked.

“They can file a claim, yes,” Willis said.

“I didn’t ask if they can file a claim,” Nadler shot back. “Is that a claim that you will pay?”

“Every claim will be evaluated,” Willis said.

“Can you answer yes or no, please?” Nadler asked.

Willis would not, as the exchange continued. “We’re going to do the right thing. We’re going to respond to this in an effective manner, and we realize we’re going to be judged based on our response,” he said.

http://www.wafb.com/Global/story.asp?S=12571630

Kevin Barbier of Denham Springs works for a company called IND-TEK Solutions. He sells a product called the Oil Spill Eater. It is made by Oil Spill Eater International, which is based in Dallas, Texas. For a month, he has been trying to grab the federal government's attention.

He had what he describes as a "productive" meeting with Coast Guard officials in Houma Saturday. Barbier said his product breaks down the oil and creates natural bacteria to eat it, leaving no dangerous chemicals behind.

"We've cleaned over 14,000 spills in 21 years," Barbier said. "We went through our product. We say, 'Hey, this is what we do. This is why we're different from what they're using now, which is a dispersant.'" ...

This product is not new. Records show The U.S. Navy in Belle Chase used it in 1995. A year later, the EPA pre-approved it for oil spill treatment. It isn't even new to BP. The company used it less than 10 years ago to clean a spill in Trinidad and Tobago.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1987377,00.html

While dispersed oil is more easily cleaned up, it can also collect on the seabed, where it can infiltrate the bottom of the food chain. The evaporation process, which is encouraged by dispersants, can also leave behind more concentrated toxic compounds, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. "We don't really know much about what dispersants might do here," says Nancy Kinner, co-director of the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. "The thing to understand is that everything being tried now is a tradeoff."

From Dr. Nancy Kinner's May 19th Testimony to Congress

The Gulf of Mexico Contingency Plan allows dispersant use, without preauthorization, a minimum distance of 3 nautical miles from the shore and a water depth of at least 33 feet. As of May 18th, 2010 an unprecedented 590,000 gallons of chemical dispersant have been applied to the oil on the surface of the Gulf. Responders are also experimenting with injecting dispersants into the oil as it is being released from the damaged riser pipe ~5,000 feet below the surface. Beginning on May 3rd, a series of trial injections began and 3,000 gallons of dispersant were injected into the oil plume at a depth of approximately 5,000 feet. Visual observations indicate this was successful in reducing the volume of oil reaching the surface. US EPA and USCG recently approved the use of dispersants in the subsurface by the damaged riser pipe. The Deepwater Horizon blowout marks the largest volume of dispersants ever used, domestically and internationally. . While dispersants have proven to be successful at reducing oiling of shorelines, numerous questions remain regarding the fate of the dispersed oil and the chemical dispersant. Application of dispersants at this depth is unprecedented, and the fate and potential effects have never been investigated. ...

Little is known about the long-term fate of dispersed oil. The National Research Council (NRC) published two studies in 1989 and 2005 reviewing the state of dispersant use and knowledge in the United States. Both reports indicated there was a lack of understanding on the fate and potential impacts of large quantities of dispersed oil. ...

Biodegradation is often cited as the most likely fate of dispersed oil, however, little research has been done on the likelihood of this scenario. Biodegradation, while potentially able to completely degrade the oil, is a complex and often misunderstood process. The majority of the studies that have examined biodegradation of dispersed oil have focused on droplets in the mixed layer, and found that biodegradation was often incomplete (i.e., some compounds remained), and significant degradation took weeks to months to occur (Harayama, 2004; Stewart et al., 1993; Lindstrom et al., 1999). No research has been done on the potential for biodegradation of dispersed oil at depths approaching those of the Deepwater Horizon, and the high pressures and different microbial communities at this depth may severely restrict or prevent any biodegradationfrom occurring. ...

Many marine biota, including copepods, shrimp, and oysters, feed on microplankton and other very small organisms that are similar in size to some dispersed oil droplets (0.1 to 1 mm), and it is possible that these organisms may consume smaller dispersed oil droplets (Gyllenberg, 1981; Andrews and Floodgate, 1974). These smaller organisms are the foundation of the marine food web, and reduced body weight, population, or mortality may occur. In addition, the oil can bioaccumulate, impacting larger species, including commercially important species such as shellfish, tuna, and shrimp. Many organisms in aquatic environments transfer dissolved gasses via special organs (i.e., gills) that can lead to increased exposure to dissolved chemicals through absorption (Barnett and Toews, 1978). While difficult to quantify, the large surface area to volume ratio of oil droplets will result in rapid dissolution of soluble chemicals, and potential exposure to biota. ...

The major gaps in dispersant knowledge arise in the link between the fate of dispersed oil and the biological endpoints. The key question that remains unanswered is: What is the most likely fate of the dispersed oil and dispersant in the marine environment? In 2009, CRRC held an R&D needs workshop that brought together members of the oil spill community and stakeholders to identify the top research needs to enhance spill response. Not surprisingly, understanding long-term fate of chemically dispersed oil was a top research priority. The Deepwater Horizon incident response has used significantly more dispersants than any other spill in U.S. history. The endpoint and effects from this huge quantity of dispersed oil cannot be confidently predicted because of lack of understanding of the potential pathways and effects. ...

However, when winds and storms created waves and currents preventing booming, skimming and burning, the method of choice became application of chemical dispersants. With more than 590,000 gallons delivered by aircraft and now with approved injection at 5,000 feet, the oil is not reaching shorelines, but is submerged in the water. The concerted effort by responders to prevent oil from reaching the marshes and beaches has to date prevented some of the images many associate with the Exxon Valdez, including oiled birds, sea otters, as well as blackened shorelines and huge floating oil slicks. Questions abound as to whether the worst is yet to come, and if there will there be long term effects of dispersing millions of gallons of oil, and if so, how fast will the natural resources rebound.

Unfortunately, I do not believe that anyone knows the answers to these questions. As data is collected by scientists to determine the amount of oil contamination in the water at various depths, we can begin to predict what the potential impacts may be. The basic risk equation is: Chemical Exposure ? Toxicological Response. Exposure is a function of the rate of uptake by the organism, the concentration of the contaminant, the duration of the exposure, and the bioavailability, absorption and metabolic reaction related to the contaminant. The toxicity can be acute (lethal) or chronic (affecting growth, reproduction, behavior or population level parameters). There have been scientific studies done that examine some constituents of oil and mimic certain environmental exposures, but there is a relatively limited database and some of it does not withstand the rigors of peer-review. None of it addresses the magnitude and extent of exposure that the Deepwater Horizon spill represents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/us/02coral.html

“The worst-case scenario is that there’s oil coating some of the corals,” Dr. Cordes said. “It would basically suffocate them.”

The composition and distribution of these plumes remain a mystery, and several government research vessels are aggressively pursuing them in the gulf. Scientists believe that the plumes are not pure oil, but most likely a haze of oil droplets, natural gas and the dispersant chemical Corexit, 210,000 gallons of which has been mixed into the jet of oil streaming from the seafloor. This oily haze could prove highly toxic to coral reefs. Both oil and dispersants, which chemically resemble dishwashing detergent, hamper the ability of corals to colonize and reproduce. And these effects are amplified when the two are mixed. ...

The study also failed to explore the application of dispersants deep underwater. This use of the chemicals, approved by federal authorities, is essentially unprecedented. It appears to have reduced the extent of the slick, limiting its impact on wetlands, beaches and surface life. But officials know little about its potential impact on life underwater. “The long-term effects on aquatic life are still unknown,” Lisa P. Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said at a news conference in May on the use of dispersants.

The application of dispersants is already highly discouraged in areas like the Florida Keys because of their known toxic effects to coral, said Billy D. Causey, Southeast regional director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Sanctuaries program. “We consider the dispersed oil more harmful than a sheen passing over the reef,” said Dr. Causey, who served as superintendent of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

http://www.physorg.com/news194629369.html

Biologists are concerned about the effect these stalled clouds could have on life in the water column, not just at mid-depth and the surface, but also on bottom-dwelling organisms that ultimately depend for their food on dead organic matter that sinks down from above. Some scientists argue that the surfactant, or soapy wetting agent, being added at the bottom source and at the surface of the ocean to help disperse the oil, could ultimately cause more damage to the health of the water column than the oil itself. The health of the water column might only be restored after many years, perhaps a decade or even longer.

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20100602/NEWS01/6020342/1060

Sen. A.G. Crowe, R-Slidell, said he is "concerned about two disasters — the oil spill and Corexit," the oil dispersant BP is using despite an EPA order to halt because of its toxicity.

Crowe also expressed frustration that BP wouldn't listen to advice on how to make its original idea of placing a structure over the pipe and funneling the oil into tanker ships actually work. He said a constituent tried to warn the company that ice crystals would form unless hot water was injected.

Now BP is going back to a containment plan and injecting hot water to battle ice formation, so "500,000 gallons of fuel ago, this could have been fixed," Crowe said.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/06/02/2010-06-02_im_scared_says_cleanup_worker_as_sickness__lawsuits_surge.html

Wunstell says his entire crew got ill after coming into contact with the dispersant, called Corexit, which is supposed to break the oil into small droplets that are biodegradable. The company says the product is safe. The feds have asked BP to limit its use.

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/06/02

The Center for Biological Diversity today filed an official notice of its intent to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for authorizing the use of toxic dispersants without ensuring that these chemicals would not harm endangered species and their habitats. The letter requests that the agency, along with the U.S. Coast Guard, immediately study the effects of dispersants on species such as sea turtles, sperm whales, piping plovers, and corals and incorporate this knowledge into oil-spill response efforts.

"The Gulf of Mexico has become Frankenstein's laboratory for BP's enormous, uncontrolled experiment in flooding the ocean with toxic chemicals," said Andrea Treece, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. "The fact that no one in the federal government ever required that these chemicals be proven safe for this sort of use before they were set loose on the environment is inexcusable."

Dispersants are chemicals used to break oil spills into tiny droplets. In theory, this allows the oil to be eaten by microorganisms and become diluted faster than it would otherwise. However, the effects of using large quantities of dispersants and injecting them into very deep water, as BP has done in the Gulf of Mexico, have never been studied. Researchers suspect that underwater oil plumes, measuring as much as 20 miles long and extending dozens of miles from the leaking rig, are the result of dispersants keeping the oil below the surface.

"Pouring dispersants into vital fish nursery grounds and endangered species habitat simply trades one evil for another. Had the government first examined dispersants before the disaster, we would not be left wondering what sort of havoc BP is wreaking on the ecosystem just so it can make the oil less visible," added Treece. "We cannot and will not allow this to happen again."

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/05/oil_public_health_html

But what may be an even larger problem are the unknown, long-term health effects of the dispersants. BP has reportedly bought up more than a third of the world's supply of these dispersants. The issue is that we do not actually know what chemicals are in many of these dispersants, or what their long-term effects will be since their exact makeup is kept secret under competitive trade laws.

There are some things we learned after the dispersants were used following the Exxon Valdez spill. Studies performed on organisms exposed to these chemicals after the cleanup found that the dispersants accumulate in living organisms at very high concentrations and harmed the developing hearts of both Pacific herring and pink salmon embryos. The salmon appear to have recovered in the years after the Exxon Valdez disaster, but the herring were not as fortunate. The herring population has never rebounded, even 20 years after the spill, due to a combination of issues including disease and poor nutrition from decreased plankton production. How sure can we be that these chemicals will not also affect humans? And what happens when oysters in the gulf harvested for consumption are exposed to the dispersants and eventually consumed?

BP has taken an unprecedented step of testing these chemicals underwater at the source of the oil in a desperate attempt to stem the flood of oil coming from the ocean floor. This has never been done before, and the EPA has authorized BP to test and monitor this approach. But are we letting the fox guard the hen house by letting the oil companies determine the safety of these cleaning agents?

Although the exact chemical content of the dispersants is not public, the National Academies of Science 2005 report on these dispersants included several sobering cautions, including how the chemicals are tested in the first place. Most lab studies use the fluorescent lighting usually found in the labs when they test toxicity and chemical breakdown, but research conducted under conditions more equivalent to natural sunlight indicate that toxicity increases significantly after sun exposure—by 12 to 50,000 times as much. Worse still, The New York Times reports that BP chose to use dispersants manufactured by a company with which it shares close ties, "even though other U.S. EPA-approved alternatives have been shown to be far less toxic and, in some cases, nearly twice as effective."

http://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/water/article1099273.ece

April 30: BP began spraying chemical dispersants directly on the gushing well, 5,000 feet below the surface, something no one has ever tried. The environmental impact is unknown, and last week the Environmental Protection Agency told BP to find a less toxic dispersant. So far, BP has not.