Friday, May 14, 2010

Dramatic Views of the Gulf Oil Slick

The "amateur video" below was uploaded to Youtube in the last twenty-four hours by Alabama resident John Wathen. Although it was taken a full week ago, on May 7, it shows some of the most dramatic footage of BP's spreading river of oil.

Imagine how much larger this "red mass of floating goo" has grown in the seven days since the video was taken:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Grist has a post up about those dispersants being used....

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-13-want-to-phase-out-a-hazardous-substance-dump-it-in-the-gulf/

"Corexit 9527A is the older product, and considered more toxic. According to its Material Safety Data Sheet, it contains a chemical called 2-butoxyethanol -- at a level of between 30 percent and 60 percent by weight (the public information on these products is maddeningly inexact). Since writing the post last week, I've come upon the entry for 2-butoxyethanol on the website of Haz-Map, a service of the National Library of Medicine that provides "information about the health effects of exposure to chemicals."

This is not charming stuff, according to Haz-Map:

Severe hemoglobinuria and changes in the lungs, kidneys, and liver are seen in mice after 7-hour lethal concentration studies. Volunteers showed no evidence of adverse effects other than mucous membrane irritation after 8 hour exposures to 200 ppm. ... For ethylene glycol ethers, there is limited positive evidence of spontaneous abortions and decreased sperm counts in humans and strong positive evidence of birth defects and testicular damage in animals."

The whole thing is so disgusting, not to mention criminal.