As you might have heard, scientists are finding gigantic under oil plumes from the BP spill, including one that is more than 22 miles long, more than a mile wide and 650 feet deep.
On Thursday, Dr. Ian MacDonald and and Dr. Lisa Suatoni testified to a Congressional subcommittee that the oil will stay toxic, and will not degrade much further, for decades. MacDonald is an expert in deep-ocean extreme communities including natural hydrocarbon seeps, gas hydrates, and mud volcano systems, a former long-time NOAA scientist, and a professor of Biological Oceanography at Florida State University. Suatoni has a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Yale, and is Senior Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council's Oceans Program.
Dr. MacDonald told Congress that the oil has already degraded, emulsified and evaporated about as much as its going to, and it is going to very resistant for further biodegradation. The oil will be in the environment for a long-time, he said, and the imprint of the BP discharge will be detectable "for the rest of my life" (he's 58, and the average lifespan for American men is about 76; so that's some 18 years).
Dr. Suatoni told Congress that oil which goes into low-oxygen zones will remain in a full toxic form for decades.
Why isn't the oil degrading faster?
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As National Georgraphic noted Thursday:
The oil plume's stability is "a little unexpected," study leader Richard Camilli, of WHOI's Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Department, said at a Thursday press briefing in Washington, D.C.
"We don't have any clear indication as to why it set up at that depth."
It's unclear why the Gulf's microbes aren't eating the oil plume, but the organisms are infamous for being unpredictable, said study co-author Christopher Reddy, a marine chemist at WHOI.
Further studies are needed to figure out why the plume isn't degrading, Reddy said during the press briefing ....
Indeed, one of the world's leading experts on oil-eating bacteria told me yesterday that the main oil-eaters aren't even present in the underwater plumes he sampled.
Tecseiryu Forum Regular
Posts : 122 Reputation : 2 Join date : 2010-08-20 Location : My Own Escape.~
Subject: Re: World News (from a Reliable Source) Tue Aug 24, 2010 12:24 pm
Dispersants Cause Gulf Fish to Absorb More Toxins and then Make It Harder for the Fish to Get Rid of the Pollutants Once Exposed
Louisiana State University fish toxicologist Kevin Kleinow has found that the dispersants used in the Gulf increase the amount of toxins the fish absorb and then, once exposed, makes it harder for the fish to get rid of the toxins through normal biological processes.
As LSU reported last week:
Kevin Kleinow, DVM, PhD, is a toxicologist who specializes in environmental health issues, especially those related to fish. This means he studies how contaminants in the environment affect fish and how those interactions may affect other organisms, including humans. With the oil spill in the Gulf, Dr. Kleinow has redirected ongoing work on domestic and industrial surfactant input into aquatic environments to dispersant use with the oil spill. Surfactants, major components of dispersants, are being examined as to how they may affect the uptake and fate of petrochemicals in the fish.
***
Dr. Kleinow postulated that surfactants discharged in the environment—even at low concentrations—would alter the uptake, excretion, retention, and potential toxicity of other chemicals in the environmental food chain.
Subsequent work in his laboratory ... showed that indeed this was true.
***
That’s what happens with the surfactant; it progressively increases the permeability so more and more compound gets into the animal from the higher contaminant concentration in the diet in the intestine, increasing bioavailability. In a similar fashion, but with opposite results, surfactants prevent the transporter-mediated concentration of contaminants into the bile necessary for excretion. Leakage back from the bile lowers the amount of contaminant available for excretion. For both venues the net result is increased compound equivalents in the fish. Surfactants themselves, having low relative toxicity as a group and hence widespread use in shampoos, detergents and the like, could facilitate the toxicity of other chemicals potentially much more hazardous to the fish.
***
By adding dispersants to the water to break up the oil, surfactants in the dispersants not only increase access of the non-remediated oil to the fish, but also could cause select toxic compounds in the oil to be absorbed more rapidly and make it harder for the fish to excrete those compounds. So not only do the dispersants used in the Gulf directly pose health risks to people and sealife (see this, this, this, this and this) and cause the oil to sink so that oil-eating bacteria will break it down much more slowly, but they increase harm to the fish from the oil as well.
And dispersants are apparently still being sprayed.
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