British Petroleum officials say that its latest attempt to stop the flood of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico is working, amid new questions about the safety of the chemicals used to break up the oil already in the environment.
With the "top kill" attempt well underway, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen seconded BP's take, saying that the gushing oil from the well has at least temporarily stopped, although some pressure from the well remains.
The top kill method, which relies on pumping thousands of gallons of heavy mud into the well shaft in order to stanch the flow of oil, was widely seen as a last-ditch effort to contain what is now officially the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
While hopes run high for stopping the flow of any additional oil into the Gulf, significant challenges remain for cleaning up the 17 million to 39 million gallons that have already polluted the ocean and the coasts of Louisiana, Alabama and Florida to date.
BP has relied on massive quantities of two types of an oil dispersant called Corexit to break up the oil into what it calls more easily broken-down portions. The chemicals, Corexit 9527A and Corexit 9500, are known to be hazardous to aquatic life and to humans.
Grist's Tom Philpott has been covering the use of the chemicals, manufactured by Nalco, since early May, and has described the two chemicals:
Corexit 9527A is the older product, and considered more toxic. According to its Material Safety Data Sheet [PDF], 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."Read more: http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2010/05/27/gulf-spill-drags-chemical-use-remains-big-question
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