BP NOW BURNING THE OIL ON THE SURFACE
June 12th, 2010The article below states that BP, “Plans to burn hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil.”
They have already started burning the oil.
The latest Big Picture includes this image from the U.S. Coast Guard:
A controlled burn of oil from the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill sends towers of fire hundreds of feet into the air over the Gulf of Mexico June 9. (U.S. Coast Guard Photo by Petty Officer First Class John Masson)
I found this photo on a KATU.com gallery. This woman has the right idea:
Sonja Daniel, who has a house on the Fort Morgan Peninsula, wears a mask Sunday, June 6, 2010 as she sunbathes on the beach of the Bon Secour National Wildlife Refuge in Baldwin County, Ala. (AP Photo/Mobile Press Register, Kate Mercer) 
Whether or not that mask will protect her from benzene and dioxins—and other toxic substances that result from burning crude oil—is a different matter. She gets a 10 for style points, though.
Via: Arizona Daily Star:
Plans to burn hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil from BP’s blown-out well are raising new questions about the health and safety of the thousands of workers on nearby rigs and vessels.
BP and the federal government are in new territory once again in dealing with the nation’s worst environmental disaster: There’s never been such a huge flaring of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, or possibly anywhere.
The incineration of such huge amounts of oil combined with the black clouds of smoke already wafting over the Gulf waters from controlled burns of surface oil create pollution hazards for the estimated 2,000 people working in the area.
Dozens of rigs and ships are clustered in the area around the spill site.
The Discoverer Enterprise, the main recovery ship, is recovering as much as 15,000 barrels of oil a day through a pipe from the wellhead. A second vessel, the Q4000, is being prepared to pull up more oil and burn it. Experts say it could be burning 10,000 barrels, or 420,000 gallons, a day.
Dr. Phil Harber, a UCLA professor, said the burning oil could expose workers to toxins that might cause severe respiratory irritation, asthma attacks and inflamed airways depending on how the burns are handled. Burning oil is a fairly common method of relieving pressure in refinery operations, he said.
“But the magnitude is a concern,” said Harber, who is also the chief of UCLA’s division of occupational and environmental medicine.
The other worry, he said, is if the wind carries off the thick clouds, “There are hundreds of ships in the area, and those workers could have significant exposures and perhaps less protection because the exposures would be unanticipated,” he said.
Harmful byproducts of burning the light crude flowing into the Gulf include fine particles; toxic gases such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which result from the incomplete burning of carbon-containing materials such as oil; and volatile organic compounds such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene.
…
Diane Bailey, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, questioned why the Coast Guard decided to allow the oil to be burned.
“It seems like a no-brainer that you wouldn’t want to do this,” she said. “Maybe there’s just such a logistical challenge in getting it onshore and getting it processed that they decided this is the cheapest, easiest thing to do. But the possible acute health problems should be of a greater concern.”
wouldn’t want the air to get jealous that the water is suffering so badly…
kevin: that photo is worthy of being a header pic. style points, indeed.
http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/bp_disaster_put_the_oil_spill_birds_out_of_their_misery/
No coverage of bird-cleaning? But bird-cleaning was all PR to begin with anyway, as in make people think that plans and effective measures exist to mitigate the disaster. Too bad that:
“quoting Der Spiegel:
Despite the short-term success in cleaning the birds and releasing them back into the wild, few, if any, have a chance of surviving, says Silvia Gaus, a biologist at the Wattenmeer National Park along the North Sea in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein.
“According to serious studies, the middle-term survival rate of oil-soaked birds is under 1 percent,” Gaus says. “We, therefore, oppose cleaning birds.”
Instead, she says, it would be less painful for the birds to kill them quickly, or to let them die in peace.
The World Wildlife Fund agrees: “Birds, those that have been covered in oil and can still be caught, can no longer be helped. … Therefore, the World Wildlife Fund is very reluctant to recommend cleaning.””
With all due respect to this young lady. She get a 10 for style points and an 11 for nice legs!