The massive use of dispersant chemicals to break up the Deepwater Horizon oil leak may have prevented more serious harm to Louisiana's wildlife and wetlands, but the remedy may actually have caused more subtle long-term harm to less visible but important components of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem, suggests a University of Maryland researcher.
Carys Mitchelmore, an aquatic toxicologist at UM's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, told members of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists that corals and anemones on the sea bottom are particularly sensitive to water contaminated with both tiny oil droplets and the dispersant chemicals. The college is meeting in Baltimore through today (Wednesday, Nov. 3).
Roughly 1.8 million gallons of Corexit chemical dispersants were used to break up the oil gushing from the Macondo well drilled by BP off the coast of Louisiana, with nearly 800,000 gallons pumped nearly a mile down to the source of the leak in a novel attempt to disperse sub-surface plumes. Experts evaluating the dispersants during the three-month leak determined they were no more toxic than the oil, and that their uses was warranted to prevent slicks from smearing beaches and wetlands and fatally coating birds and other wildlife.
But tests in Mitchelmore's lab – conducted with the aid of students at St. Mary's College – found water containing chemically dispersed oil affected the growth of one common species of coral, which took up to three weeks to recover from just an eight-hour exposure. Anemones also absorbed more of the toxic polyaromatic hydrocarbon compounds found in oil when it was broken up into tiny droplets, she said.
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