Oil Dispersants Persist In The Deep

Abstract

DURING THE Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico last spring, BP injected 2.9 million L of a chemical dispersant into the stream of oil gushing from the ocean floor. Now, researchers have tracked a key ingredient in the dispersant and found that it is unexpectedly persistent in deep ocean waters ( Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es103838p). At the time of the spill, BP and government scientists reasoned that applying a jet of dispersant at the spill’s source, almost 1 mile below the surface, could prevent large oil droplets from rising and forming oil slicks, which can cause significant damage to coastal environments. But this spill marked the first time that crews had applied dispersant deep underwater, so nobody knew the chemicals’ fates or their environmental consequences. To find out, Elizabeth B. Kujawinski, a chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and colleagues collected water samples at different depths around the Deepwater Horizon wellhead to ...