Richard Denison Blogs on the Chemical Dispersants Used in the Oil Spill Clean-up

Dr. Richard Denison is a Senior Scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). He has 25 years of experience in the areas of environmental policy, hazard and risk assessment, and management for industrial chemicals and nanomaterials. Denison has been writing regularly since mid-May on the EDF’s Chemicals and Nanomaterials Blog about the dangers of using inadequately tested and ineffective dispersants to aid in cleaning up the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As many as one million gallons of two dispersants, Corexit® 9527 and Corexit® 9500, have been released into the Gulf. Denison deftly highlights the key issues surrounding BP’s use of these chemicals. He notes that they are “among the least effective of the 18 dispersants that EPA has approved under the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan, and they appear to be among the more toxic based on limited short-term toxicity tests conducted on fish and shrimp.” Denison emphasizes that the long-term effects of these chemicals on the marine environment as well as the workers exposed to them far from known. He notes how the Toxic Substances Control Act denies the EPA the power to develop even basic safety information for chemicals that are being brought onto the market, or to require the replacement of chemicals that have been proven to be dangerous. Denison occasionally provides links to articles of interest, such as a posting on The Pump Handle by Elizabeth Grossman that questions whether the health and safety of response workers to the Gulf oil crisis are being ensured. Overall, Dennison’s blog posts are informative and easy to read – two attributes of a good blogger.