Transcript:

ambience: spraying

You're hearing oil-eating microbes being sprayed on an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s just one of several techniques being used to clean up spills. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

“The amount of oil spilled ultimately controls how well these type of mitigation techniques will really work. In the first case people are most familiar with trying to contain the oil with booms and skimmer ships and simply removing the oil from the surface of the water. In addition to that there's dispersants, which are a chemical that's applied to the oil to disperse it into the water and get rid of the surface slick that you often see, dispersants can be useful in some cases and are used quite widely in European countries. Beyond that there's enhanced microbial activity, which is using bacteria that can consume oil or transform the oil to other compounds and reduce the effect in the environment.”

Dr. Chuck Kennicott is part of the Geochemical Environmental Research Group at Texas A & M University.

“The original composition of the oil has a lot to do with how long the oil will persist in the environment. In the case of a heavy crude oil such as the Exxon Valdez, a residue of that material will probably be around in the environment for tens of years and possibly 50 to 100 years from now we'll still be able to detect the presence of that oil, though this doesn't infer that the residue that's left is necessarily detrimental to the environment. There can be a wide range of effects on the local as well as regional ecology. It’s a difficult question to easily predict what the ultimate impact will be.”

Pulse of the Planet is presented by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

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