Chemical dispersants were supposed to make it easier for undersea bacteria to digest the oil that poured into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon blowout.
But scientists who've been studying the aftermath of the 2010 disaster now say the controversial chemicals were a bust: Instead of eating the dispersed hydrocarbons, oil-munching microbes appear uninterested when crude and dispersants are mixed together.
A type of bacteria that normally would be first in line at the hydrocarbon buffet — and which surged when exposed to oil alone — "clearly declined in the presence of dispersants," a new study found. And another microbe actually ate the dispersants, University of Georgia oceanographer Samantha Joye said.
"Instead of making a community that was more efficient at oil degradation, the dispersant created a community that was really efficient at degrading dispersant, but not very efficient at degrading oil," said Joye, who leads a research group examining the effects of the oil spill on the Gulf.
The latest research by Joye and her colleagues was published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a leading peer-reviewed scientific journal. The authors recommend moving cautiously before spraying dispersants — which are toxic on their own, and appear to be more toxic when combined with oil — onto the next spill.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @01:04PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drill_baby_drill [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gravis on Saturday November 14 2015, @01:15PM
it seems like we have more than ample reasons to stop using oil and even more to stop deep sea drilling.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Saturday November 14 2015, @01:22PM
Unfortunately for you the price of oil is dropping rapidly and we have a huge surplus.
So, for the meantime at least, it's going to get used more, not less.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Saturday November 14 2015, @01:35PM
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday November 14 2015, @03:25PM
To be honest, my inference engine notices a missing option: drilling the oil execs.
Vote skynet 2024!
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 15 2015, @06:51AM
it seems like we have more than ample reasons to stop using oil and even more to stop deep sea drilling.
And use what instead? I don't exactly agree with the peak oil people, but they do have a good point about certain things. If you run up the cost of transportation and energy delivery frivolously or not, you will create massive economic problems.
Second, what is the actual harm supposed to be here? Dispersants don't supposedly just make oil more easily consumed by microbes, they also supposedly make it less bioreactive (that is, provide some degree of isolation of the compounds of oil so that it poisons organisms to a lesser degree), which if you think about it is a contrary purpose to the first. So it's not clear to me that there is an actual problem here, but rather an already known trade off between biodegradation and bioreactivity.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by M. Baranczak on Saturday November 14 2015, @01:26PM
(Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Saturday November 14 2015, @06:53PM
Exactly. Oil on beaches is a PR disaster, the chemicals did exactly what they were designed to do in preventing that. And since, from just the summary, plenty of critters like eating the dispersants they aren't going to be a longterm problem. When there is a Kaboom! there aren't any great solutions, only less bad ones and this one looks a lot less bad than oil covered seabirds running in 24/7 rotation.
Of course Greens can't actually admit that reality nor the reality that they hate all forms of energy and the humans who use it so we get a bunch of mental diarrhea meaning nothing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 14 2015, @01:40PM
After the spill in the Gulf, we had brown oil foam on the Atlantic beaches, at least as far north as Jacksonville. It wasn't nasty clumps like Galveston always has on normal days, announced spill or not, but it was present and clearly visible in the surf for almost a year.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday November 14 2015, @07:04PM
... before it blew a smoking crater into the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in the most ignorant way.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @08:35PM
By ecological permit, I think you mean an environmental impact study? BP asked for, and received, a waiver from the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, so they didn't have to do such a study.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/04/AR2010050404118.html [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @08:22PM
I didn't know Corexit is biodegradable. I'm no biologist, but just going by the quote above, after the Corexit is consumed, wouldn't there then be droplets of petroleum that would nourish the organisms that eat hydrocarbons? After a fire, small plants like grasses initially make up most of the biomass, and later on, trees may replace them. I can imagine a process of succession taking place in these oil droplets, too. It'd be great, if the addition of the dispersion only caused a delay and didn't outright prevent the oil from being consumed.