Have you heard of Corexit 9500? Well I found out today that this is one of the brilliant "solutions" currently being used in the Gulf of Mexico to "solve" the oil spill problem.
BP with the approval of the US government have dumped more than a million gallons of Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527 into the Gulf of Mexico.
So what is Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527? (By the way, this stuff is toxic that some countries have banned it's usage under any circumstance). It's a chemical oil dispersal agent. Dispersal of oil does not eliminate oil, it does not decrease the toxicity of the oil. What does it do? It just breaks up the oil into small particles so that it becomes less visible ... How is this a solution? It isn't! But I guess from the perspective of BP it does solve some problems. Namely, when something's out of sight, it's out of mind. Hiding the effects of this oil spill will mean public attention will slowly focus elsewhere.
Meanwhile the sea animals that are killed by the combination of the toxic oil and even more toxic dispersant will sink (another effect of Corexit) and disappear rather than wash up onto the shore where the the public can see the disastrous affects. Just imagine the outcry! But that can't be allowed to happen. The public cannot be allowed to see what's really going on there!
Furthermore, not only does Corexit make the oil less visible, it also becomes pretty much impossible to collect. To disperse the oil means it will never be cleaned up! Instead, it will spread throughout all the oceans of the world, polluting everywhere, killing everything in the water and affecting everyone using the water. The implications of this are huge! Huge for marine life. Huge for the environment. Huge for the human race....
This makes me so sad.
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