Oils Spills

What are Oil Spills?

Oil spills are the contamination of water or land due to an oil pour. Oil spills usually come in large amounts because of their contamination to the environment around them. Massive oil corporations are usually the main source of oil spills.

What are the consequences?

Oil spills endanger both animal and human life in the surrounding environment. Oil spills in oceans can kill aquatic life, ruin habitats for those animals, and destroy resources that humans depend on to survive. For example, the BP’s Deepwater Horizon Spill--occuring in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010--was a major spill that resulted in $8.8 billion in natural resource damages.

How can you help?

Although Oil Spills are very hard to clean up when they happen, they can be prevented and more effectively recognized. When Oil Spills happen, you can help by simply reporting them to Environment, Health, and Safety (858) 534-3660 or UCSD Police: (858) 534-HELP (4357). To prevent Oil Spills, you can protest and write petitions that go against Oil Companies creating pipelines and mining sites that endanger the surrounding area such as the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is owned by three major oil companies.

Examples - Dakota Access Pipeline, BP’s Deepwater Horizon Spill, The Persian Gulf War Oil Spills

Soultions

Using Oil Booms - The use of oil booms is a very simple and popular method of controlling oil spills. Equipment called containment booms acts like a fence to prevent the oil from further spreading or floating away. This method is Effective only when the oil is in one spot. It works when the spill is accessible within a few hours of taking place, otherwise, the area of the spill becomes too large to manage. It cannot be successfully employed under rough sea waves, high wind velocities or fluctuating tides.

Using Sorbents - Sorbents are materials that soak up liquids by either absorption (pulling in through pores) or adsorption (forming a layer on the surface). Both these properties make the process of clean-up much easier. Materials commonly used as oil sorbents are hay, peat moss, straw or vermiculite. The oil can be recovered, and this prevents wastage and further pollution. After the absorption, the sorbent materials must be effectively retrieved. This is a difficult task and may prove to be worse if ignored. They are most effective in small spills or to manage the leftover traces of a larger spill.

Chemical Stabilisation of oil by Elastomers - Right after an oil spill, the immediate concern is to prevent the oil from spreading and contaminating the adjacent areas. While mechanical methods like using oil booms effectively contain the oil, they have certain limitations to their use. Quite recently, experts have been using compounds like ‘Elastol’, which is basically poly iso-butylene (PIB) in a white powdered form, to confine oil spills. The compound gelatinizes or solidifies the oil on the water surface and thus keeps it from spreading or escaping. The gelatin is easy to retrieve, and this makes the process highly efficient.