DANGEROUS DISPERSANTS: Dispersing the oil is considered one of the best ways to protect birds and keep the slick from making landfall. But the dispersants contain harmful toxins of their own.
Image: ALASKA DEPTARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION
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The chemicals BP is now relying on to break up the steady flow of leaking oil from deep below the Gulf of Mexico could create a new set of environmental problems.
Even if the materials, called dispersants, are effective, BP has already bought up more than a third of the world’s supply. If the leak from 5,000 feet beneath the surface continues for weeks, or months, that stockpile could run out.
On Thursday BP began using the chemical compounds to dissolve the crude oil, both on the surface and deep below, deploying an estimated 100,000 gallons. Dispersing the oil is considered one of the best ways to protect birds and keep the slick from making landfall. But the dispersants contain harmful toxins of their own and can concentrate leftover oil toxins in the water, where they can kill fish and migrate great distances.The exact makeup of the dispersants is kept secret under competitive trade laws, but a worker safety sheet for one product, called Corexit, says it includes 2-butoxyethanol, a compound associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems at high doses.
“There is a chemical toxicity to the dispersant compound that in many ways is worse than oil,” said Richard Charter, a foremost expert on marine biology and oil spills who is a senior policy advisor for Marine Programs for Defenders of Wildlife and is chairman of the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. “It’s a trade off – you’re damned if you do damned if you don’t -- of trying to minimize the damage coming to shore, but in so doing you may be more seriously damaging the ecosystem offshore.”
BP did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
Dispersants are mixtures of solvents, surfactants and other additives that break up the surface tension of an oil slick and make oil more soluble in water, according to a paper published by the National Academy of Sciences. They are spread over or in the water in very low concentration – a single gallon may cover several acres.
Once they are dispersed, the tiny droplets of oil are more likely to sink or remain suspended in deep water rather than floating to the surface and collecting in a continuous slick. Dispersed oil can spread quickly in three directions instead of two and is more easily dissipated by waves and turbulence that break it up further and help many of its most toxic hydrocarbons evaporate.
But the dispersed oil can also collect on the seabed, where it becomes food for microscopic organisms at the bottom of the food chain and eventually winds up in shellfish and other organisms. The evaporation process can also concentrate the toxic compounds left behind, particularly oil-derived compounds called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs.
Studies if oil dispersal have found that the chemicals used can accumulate in shellfish and other organisms.
According to a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report, the dispersants and the oil they leave behind can kill fish eggs. A study of oil dispersal in Coos Bay, Ore. found that PAH accumulated in mussels, the Academy’s paper noted. Another study examining fish health after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 found that PAHs affected the developing hearts of Pacific herring and pink salmon embryos. The research suggests the dispersal of the oil that’s leaking in the Gulf could affect the seafood industry there.
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22 Comments
Add CommentIn the past, drilling fluids were not good for the environment, but scientist came up with drilling fluids that are highly biodegradable and can be dumped right into the environment. Onshore, these are often plowed into a rancher or farmers field for fertilizer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, please explain to me why we don't have a harmless, biodegradable dispersant that will, like the oil, eventually be eaten by bacteria.
"Studies if oil dispersal have found that the chemicals used can accumulate in shellfish and other organisms."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the time I graduated with an environmental science degree, I have permanently stopped eating shell fish. They are an organism that concentrates toxins. Why anybody would take the risk of eating them is beyond me.
Let us please ALL pray to god that this is the last nail in the coffin of fossil fuels. We have a solution, no more research is needed, only circumventing of the special interest. Let this be the final warning, by god, nature, mother earth, jesus, or whatever you beleive. I am not a religious man, but this is just too much. My state may never recover from this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCurrently, they are only concerned with the "visible" effects (e.g. picking up dead animals, slowing the spreading on shore). Nothing is being said of the hidden effects. For example, for every 1 dead turtle that washes ashore as a result of this, there are probably 1000 others still floating out there. Its too big for man to handle, its like trying to stop a volcano, we just don't have the technology.
You were concerned about mercury possioning from fish before? How about now? The side effects of this could be felt for centries and millenia. Don't eat fish out of the gulf, trust me on that.
The guy above mentioned why people eat shellfish because they are filter feeders and do filter out and absorb toxins. Well, for a long long time the oceans were clean and the toxins obsorbed by the shell fish were negligable. since the inception of fossil fuels, that has changed, the oceans are filled with toxins. Shell fish are generally the most toxic, but large fish are also really bad, things like mercury cannot be secreted by animals, so the higher up the food chain the more toxins you will see. I don't eat fish anymore.
Drilling fluids are still not good for the environment, or us, as evidenced by the effects of shale drilling in different areas of the USA. There was a previous article on this in SciAm.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat I'm seeing is this oil drilling is entirely damned-if-you-do, from an environmental perspective. We're still waiting for more studies to see just how bad it is from the human perspective.
What I say? Spray biodegradable dish soap! Don't you see what it does in an oily pan? Whoosh, it's all gone.
Talk about fighting fire with fire. The extent to which we are willing and able to damage ourselves and the environment never ceases to amaze me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately, with the snails pace at which we're making advances in alternate power sources, we're going to be stuck with fossil fuels for quite some time to come.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSorry, it's a fact, get use to it.
What we need to do in the interim, is put the brakes on the greed and do things safely.
There is no excuse for this mess. We have the technology to put fail safes in place to prevent this kind of accident.
Nice to see that hysteria is still alive and well in our society today. Basic chemistry will tell you this dispersant is simply a detergent that emulsifies the oil. If the most harmful thing it does is give you a headache, make you throw up and maybe have a hard time getting pregnant when you drink a gallon of it, it's nothing to worry about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with the current oil slick is its concentration, not the fact its oil. The gulf naturally seeps 5000 barrels of oil a day already.
Sunlight and bacteria will break this stuff down once we get it emulsified, just like it does with natural seeps.
You clean up the mess, find out what went wrong, fix it and move forward. At least adults do. Whiny little children hide under the bed.
what concerns me about this "spill" is the amount of time it's taken to come up with a solution to capture the escaping oil...after how many days they are finally showing us something like a cargo container tipped on its side and are worried about positioning it on top of the drill hole...i'm almost sure that some high schools kids could have come up with something better and faster....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing dispersants (wetting agents similar to dish-washing liquid) to break up the mineral oil into a water dispersed emulsion does not reduce the danger associated with mineral oil spills. It does camouflage the spill and reduce the immediate impact on birds, fish and other wildlife less of which are found dead drenched with oils.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing dispersants increase the bio-availability of the dispersed mineral oils and has a greater impact by introducing a much greater amount of the mineral oil into the bio-food chain.
How come all the "brilliant" scientists paid by large companies can not understand this. Perhaps they have the same blind sight that looked beyond the harmful effects of asbestos, cigarettes and long distance air flight, to see the beneficial results of human population control.
frgough,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy don't I believe what your saying?
If dispersants are so harmless...why doesn't BP say so.
Are you one of those "Drill till death do us part people"?
More dispersants are released every day by homemakers doing dishes than will be released by this entire cleanup,and then some.So why are the use of dispersants at such a smaller scale suddenly a problem?What a bunch of headline grabbing baloney.One would think Scientific American wouldn't stoop so low.The real story is why this wasn't done from day one?Are we now going to outlaw dispersants used in dish washing?I think not.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@Bops,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe cool thing about facts is that you can verify them. Look up natural seeps. Then go look at some pictures of Prince Edward Sound where the Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred.
But, be prepared to open your mind to the fact you have been lied to by the environmentalist movement.
Unless, of course, you are actually an ideologue, in which case, hide under you safety blanket of lies and continue to feel safe.
Of course these BIG OIL toxic chemicals they are using in the gulf, are no different than the ones that halli-cheney-burton has been using for years in their refracking methods, destroying clean water aquifers -- all for the same GREEDY need of more and more OIL/GAS, despite it being a finite supply. Our OIL addiction has gotten quite out-of-control, despite the facts that the U.S. has only 3% of the world's OIL reserves and 5% of the world's population, yet continues to use 24% of the world's daily OIL production -- thus the reason why we import 67% of all our OIL.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm sure we will see the price of OIL/GAS rise again to record levels just like BIG OIL's profits, as the commodity brokers feed on more FEARmongering, despite this gulf epic environmental disaster only spewing from ONE rig and ONE source of OIL.
frgough: "you have been lied to by the environmentalist movement"
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Typical dittohead, spewing the usual political rhetoric from the king of denialists -- rush limprod -- still trying to make ignorant people 'think' that the pristine qualities of Prince William Sound have returned 21 years after that epic environmental disaster by Exxon and BIG OIL.
Sorry, but your attacks on environmental protections while showing the need to use and abuse our natural resources as quickly and irresponsibly as possible, like BIG OIL, is well past ludicrous. It is estimated that 20,000 gallons of crude still remain after 21 years, and that it will take hundreds of years before it has been restored by nature -- not BIG OIL.
Its funny those who find only fault in the U.S. never see any right.Sure we use 24% of the worlds oil but there is no mention of the fact the we are the driving force of the worlds economy or how many people have something to eat because we use all that oil.By all means let us stop and let billions of die 0f starvation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisjack: "sure we use 24% of the world's OIL..."
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It's not a question of being "right" or "wrong," since it's just a fact that we only have 3% of the world's OIL reserves and only 5% of the world's population, yet use 24% of the world's daily OIL production -- a full 67% of OIL from imported sources.
We have needed to cut our fossil fuel usage since the first OIL embargoes of the 1970's when renewable energy was first given tax credits to increase the technology and R&D. Thirty years ago, those tax credits for renewable energy were ended, and almost all of that technology was offshored to Europe and Japan, to placate the BIG OIL lobbyists. Today, if we do not continue the expansion of our renewable energy economy, China will become the world's largest producer and manufacturer of renewable energy and get the R&D money from the rest of the world.
Your point is moot, and you fail to 'think' of the future, since the future is NOT finite fossil fuels, but renewable energy!
When was the last time renewable energy created an epic environmental disaster like Exxon or BP? We have not learned from our past mistakes, and this will only create more in the future as we placate the BIG OIL gods!
Dispersants are not just dish-washing detergents. They contain a great many powerful reactive chemicals, as crude oil is itself a complex substance. As an army officer, I have been sent to clean up oil spills on tourist beaches using dispersants. The soles of our rubber boots came unstuck, and we all had such swollen feet we were all sent home! And wildlife was killed stone dead for years! But the beaches were clean so no compensation had to be paid...Fishermen weren't scientifically equipped to proove their industry had been damaged!
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read about my solution to solve the Gulf of Mexico's oil spill
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http://www.ghostnasa.com/posts2/070oilspillsolution.html
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gaetanomarano - I'm no expert, either, but I think you fail to consider the effects produced by the presence of an unknown amount of methane within the well - the original source of the explosion producing the problem leak. I expect that any ignition will not burn oil but will (eventually) produce another methane explosion, pretty much like the previous one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou should not use solvents. Use the base surfactant which is an ester of a natural fatty acid derived from plants and trees.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeanwhile the Obama administration through the U.S. Export Import Bank has guaranteed 10 Billion in loans for offshore oil exploration off the Coast of Brazil. This exploration will be conducted by Brazils state controlled oil company Petrobras. Petrobras is the single largest investment ($811 million) by the George Soros controlled hedge fund.
We all know that the billionaire George Soros has been the biggest financial supporter of Obama and this administration.
Many of the drilling jobs could end up going to Brazil, which recently discovered numerous oil fields off its coast. Brazilian oil company Petrobras wants to tap those fields but lacks the rigs.
"They're licking their chops saying, 'We'll take them'" from the U.S., said industry analyst Collin Gerry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeanwhile the Obama administration through the U.S. Export Import Bank has guaranteed 10 Billion in loans for offshore oil exploration off the Coast of Brazil. This exploration will be conducted by Brazil’s state controlled oil company Petrobras. Petrobras is the single largest investment ($811 million) by the George Soros controlled hedge fund.
We all know that the billionaire George Soros has been the biggest financial supporter of Obama and this administration.
Many of the drilling jobs could end up going to Brazil, which recently discovered numerous oil fields off its coast. Brazilian oil company Petrobras wants to tap those fields but lacks the rigs.
"They're licking their chops saying, 'We'll take them'" from the U.S., said industry analyst Collin Gerry.