Monday, July 19, 2010

What Happens To All That Oily Sand? You Won't Like The Answer

by Something the Dog Said

Oil is nasty stuff. It is full of various toxic chemicals which  you really don’t want to have on you, your wild life or your beaches. The question is, what do you do with it when you spill an estimated 5.16 million barrels (based on a 60K barrels per day) into an area where there are lots and lots of beaches for it was up on?

Sadly the main concept for dealing with spilled oil is to let it "weather" which means it breaks down into small droplets, gets eaten by bacteria and is generally sent to the bottom of the sea where we can’t see it so we don’t worry about it. This does nothing in terms of getting the toxic chemicals out of the water, but there is a hell of a lot of water in the oceans and there is toxic crap from other sources, so we don’t sweat it as much as we should.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"



continued at Daily Kos....