One of the solutions to the oil spill crisis going on is the controversial use of toxic chemical
dispersants to break up the oil and help it more readily evaporate. I personally had not heard of this in the news, but according to The New York Times, 160,000 gallons of these chemical
concoctions have already been sprayed on the ocean surface and 6,000 gallons have been pumped down the the shaft where the leak is coming from. In terms of what actually composes the mixture they are using, that's a trade secret. What is known is that the chemicals are coming from a product line called
Corexit. This actually got their approval rescinded by
Britian due to the harmful affects of the chemicals on the marine life in rocky shores. Good to know that's being spilled into the ocean, right?
Some
environmentalists see chemical
dispersants as a necessary evil when an oil spill grows out of control like this one. The potentially harmful affects on ocean life cannot be predicted from the results in the rocky shore since the ocean is definitely a different environment, but it would be naive to assume this process is safe. Below is a link to the article and a satellite picture of the oil spill. It's shocking to think we can see this from space!
http://www.newsinferno.com/archives/20162
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