Toxic Soup: Scientists Call for More Dispersants; Marine Life May Suffer

"Toxic Soup" is a Change.org series focusing on how the Deepwater Horizon oil spill impacts the Gulf's seafood industry and marine life. For more posts on this issue, see here, here, here, here, and here.

The bad news from BP keeps rolling in, much like the waves of oil that keep cascading onto the Gulf's coast. Not only did the corporation's top kill solution to the spill officially fail, but now a group of scientists is recommending that BP and the government continue to spray toxic dispersants to mitigate the leak's impact. When it rains, it pours—or in this case, sprays hundreds of thousands of gallons of a chemical-heavy dispersant called Corexit.

Corexit supposedly "corrects" an oil spill by breaking up oil into small droplets, which fall below the surface of the water and eventually make their way into the water column. This measure is intended to prevent oil from washing up on shore, where it can make its way into sensitive marshes and other wetlands. Because oil may keep spewing from the Deepwater Horizon rig through August, the group of scientists recommending dispersants figures the chemicals may offer a better alternative to just letting the oil flow where it may.

While I understand scientists' desperation to institute a stop-gap measure til BP can get its act together, I fear dispersants' potential effects on marine life. The Gulf's seafood industry is already seriously battered—and not in a tasty, fish-fry kind of way. Oil's toxicity has been felt across the board by fish, oysters, crabs, shrimp, fishermen, and restaurants. Even scientists admit that using Corexit may, in fact, make matters worse.

Perhaps the biggest problem with dispersants is that researchers just don't know that much about them. While dispersants have been studied in short-term scenarios, research into how the chemicals can affect marine life in the long-term is seriously lacking. Already, BP's dumped 900,000 gallons of Corexit into the Gulf, an unprecedented amount. And while the intensity of the spraying is expected to decline, the Gulf contains more dispersant than anyone ever thought possible.

What little scientists do know about Corexit's effects on marine life is nothing short of alarming. As Change.org's Environment blogger Marah Hardt reported, these toxic chemicals "have been linked to respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney, and blood disorders in people, and have caused developmental problems, cancer, and death for multiple marine species." Not exactly the kind of data Gulf seafood eaters hope to hear.

Prior to scientists' recommendations, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told BP to find a less toxic dispersant to use. BP claimed it couldn't find another less-toxic alternative to Corexit in the quantities it needed, and the EPA backed off. The oil giant can't find a Corexit alternative, can't find a way to fix its spill—this is what BP's high-paid engineers can come up with? Diddly squat?

For up-to-the-moment information on how the oil spill is affecting the Gulf's seafood industry and marine life, keeping reading Change.org's "Toxic Soup" series. And to prevent a catastrophe like this from ever happening again, be sure to sign our petition asking President Obama to stop new offshore oil drilling.