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Ongoing Gulf <strong>of</strong> Mexico Oil Disaster:<br />

BP's Dispersant Allowed Oil to Penetrate Beaches More Deeply<br />

By<br />

Julia Whitty<br />

A worker cleans up oily waste on Elmer's Island, Louisiana, on May 21, 2010: Photo by<br />

Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Kelley, US Coast Guard, via Flickr<br />

In an attempt to deal with <strong>the</strong> 206 million gallons <strong>of</strong> light crude oil<br />

erupting from <strong>the</strong> Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010, BP unleashed<br />

about 2.6 million gallons <strong>of</strong> Corexit dispersants (Corexit 9500A and<br />

Corexit EC9527) in surface waters and at <strong>the</strong> wellhead on <strong>the</strong> sea floor.<br />

From <strong>the</strong> beginning <strong>the</strong> wisdom <strong>of</strong> that decision was questioned. I wrote<br />

extensively about those concerns in "BP's Deep Secrets [2]."<br />

In <strong>the</strong> short term <strong>the</strong> dispersed oil made BP's catastrophe look like<br />

less <strong>of</strong> a catastrophe since less oil made it to shore. But what about <strong>the</strong><br />

long term?<br />

In a new paper in PLOS ONE [3], researchers took a closer look.<br />

They examined <strong>the</strong> effects <strong>of</strong> oil dispersed mechanically (sonication), oil<br />

dispersed by Corexit 9500A, and just plain seawater (<strong>the</strong> control). They<br />

used laboratory-column experiments to simulate <strong>the</strong> movement <strong>of</strong><br />

dispersed and nondispersed oil through sandy beach sediments.

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