EPA Approves BP’s Use of Questionable Chemicals to Break Up Oil
BP resumed spraying dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico today, according to The Associated Press. The company started using the chemicals a week after the spill first occurred, but had halted their use in order to test their environmental impact.
As we've reported, the chemicals -- which are intended to thin out the oil -- contain harmful toxins of their own. Their exact makeup is kept secret, but they do contain a compound "associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems at high doses."
They're also called dispersants for a reason. The chemicals break up the oil and then disperse it, so instead of having the oil collect at the surface, dispersed droplets of oil can spread more quickly and in more directions. This means the droplets linger longer in the water, collecting on the seabed and harming the ecosystem offshore
Using dispersants involves a trade-off, according to a 2005 National Academy of Sciences report. It's a choice between diluting oil droplets more broadly and invisibly in the ocean and seeing thick gobs of it coating seabirds and beaches.
Nonetheless, the Environmental Protection Agency has given BP approval to move ahead with the chemicals, BP spokesman Mark Proegler told the AP.
The EPA has said that the federal government will regularly analyze the effect of dispersants on "the environment, water and air quality, and human health."
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3 comments
cindybax
May 10, 2010, 9:37 p.m.
Good that you’re concentrating on the dispersants. This is THE story around the cleanup.
I see you’ve covered it in a couple of stories, but not the fact that these dispersants DID NOT UNDERGO TOXICITY TESTS.
See Mother Jones piece today and Andy Rowell’s OilChange piece from last week.
bhisti
May 11, 2010, Midnight
It’s a very disturbing sign that common sense is thrown to the wind because the industry is unprepared and feels the need to to throw a hail Mary. That the very agency responsible for protecting the environment goes along with this is indication regulators remain spineless. This seems par for the course. The feds have studies personality types and they know full well what type of personality is consistently favored for promotion to decision-making positions. In government, the people who stand up for what is right are actually blacklisted from such positions. That’s how industry (especially but not uniquely, petroleum) wants it. For there to be change, there has to be change.
Greydog
May 11, 2010, 5:03 a.m.
There must be NO CAP placed on BP’s financial responsibility to the people imperiled by BP’s gross negligence. The ‘Senators-to-the-Rescue’ with their inappropriately inadequate $10 billion cap, are clearly stepping in to rescue their corporate masters. People of New Orleans, be damned.
BP and government NON REGULATORS are responsible for this environmental catastrophe, which has no end in sight. BP must pay ALL damages, including the ongoing loss of business.
I suggest that the USELESS CORPORATE SHILLS aka CONGRESS, suspend their taxpayer funded salaries including all the LIFETIME benefits they enjoy at the expense of the American taxpayer, and instead, for starters, funnel that money to the 27,000 people in New Orleans, who have lost their source of income and whose future incomes have been destroyed by this irreparable ecological meltdown.
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