Mississippi River pours as much dispersant into the Gulf of Mexico as BP
Published: Wednesday, August 04, 2010, 11:00 PM
Every day during the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, contractors sprayed an average 140,000 pounds of Corexit dispersant onto oil slicks on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and into the oil being released a mile below.
View full sizeThe Mississippi River was photographed July 10 at the point where it flows into the Gulf of Mexico.But what few in the public understood was that an equivalent amount of similar surfactant chemicals -- the active ingredient in Corexit and in household soaps and industrial solvents -- enters the Gulf each day from theMississippi River, with more flowing in from other rivers and streams along the coast.
Surfactants are only one of a myriad of potentially harmful chemical substances delivered by the Mississippi and other rivers and streams to the Gulf each day, scientists say.
"We have abused the Gulf for years," said George Crozier, executive director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and associate professor of marine science at the University of South Alabama. "We have our own versions of the dead zone in Mobile Bay. The most famous is the Jubilee, which is certainly caused by nutrient-fed algae blooms and low-oxygen driven."
The surfactants in the Mississippi and other rivers are the ingredients in dishwasher detergent and industrial solvents that cause oils to disperse. They get into the Mississippi from the disposal of wastewater to sewage treatment plants and directly to the river.
According to a 1996 U.S. Geological Survey report, the median concentration of surfactants in the river was .05 parts per million. Based on the river's average flow rate, that would result in 140,000 pounds of surfactant entering the Gulf each day, said David Dzombak, director of the Steinbrenner Institute for Environmental Education and Research at Carnegie Mellon University and chairman of a National Research Council committee that authored a 2008 study of Mississippi River water quality.
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