Bad news for the Gulf of Mexico: a study released this week sheds new light on the toxicity of oil in aquatic environments, and shows that environmental impact studies currently in use may be inadequate. The report is to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
...This is another big jump in understanding the real damages from oil spills. Studies of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill created an entirely new understanding of oil damage when it was found that oil was toxic in minute quantities measured in parts-per-billion and even parts-per-trillion – much lower than previously recognized. This finding of phototoxicity, however, presents a new challenge.
Phototoxicity is a phenomenon that is well known to human users of certain antibiotics, which can cause a rash if the person is exposed to direct sunlight. It has also long been associated with crude oil and creosote, which can cause a nasty redness on human skin when combined with sun exposure.
“It’s kind of a new paradigm in thinking about the toxicity of oil,” adds Cherr. “Up until now, there has been this awareness of it in the laboratory studies, but it has not been taken into account in the real world, in environmental analyses, and certainly in regulating the amounts of oil that are spilled.”...Please contiune reading at: