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Ottawa Approves Controversial Chemical for Ocean Oil Spills
The federal government has quietly approved the use of a highly controversial chemical for dispersing ocean oil spills, despite growing scientific evidence it doesn’t always work as claimed and even intensifies the toxicity of oil.
Last month Environment Canada released regulations establishing a list of approved “treating agents” for oil spills that included Corexit EC 9500A, which sinks the oil and spreads it through the water column.
Exxon developed Corexit five decades ago to disperse and sink oil and avoid ugly petroleum slicks on beaches.
In 2010 BP used almost two million gallons of Corexit during its catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, prompting a raft of scientific studies that challenged its effectiveness and revived concerns about how such emulsifiers can make oil more toxic.
In approving Corexit, Environment Canada argued that so-called spill treating agents “possess favourable characteristics as oil spill countermeasures and offer the potential for high efficacy coupled with low toxicity to biota in the marine environment.”
“The primary objective of treatment with dispersants is to shift the distribution of an oil spill from the water surface down into the water column to divert the oil from impacting more environmentally sensitive habitat, and allow dilution to reduce the impact to aquatic species exposed to the oil,” it stated.
But that’s not what the fishing industry, scientists and technology experts are saying about the dispersant. They contend Corexit poses a substantial hazard to marine life and allows the industry to hide its inability to recover large oil spills with current technologies.
In fact, Transport Canada confirms only 10 to 15 per cent of oil spilled in the ocean is recovered by industry.
