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.”
John Davis, director of Clean Ocean Action Committee (a Nova Scotia consortium of fishers and fish plant operators), called the regulations allowing the dispersant’s use “a massive threat to fishing industry” and another example of the power of oil and gas lobbyists in Ottawa.
He says the new regulations are a direct result of Bill C-22, passed by the Harper government in 2015 to expedite the export of bitumen by tankers to foreign markets and supported by industry.
The legal status of dispersant use in Canadian ocean waters had been uncertain because a variety of legislation, including the Fisheries Act, prohibited the spraying of any harmful substance into the marine environment.
But Bill C-22 removed those uncertainties and made it legal for companies and regulators to dump dispersants on an oil spill and pretend they had solved a problem.
But breaking down oil and hiding it in the water column is not a cleanup, said Davis.
“It is sham,” he said. “It doesn’t do anything to clean up an oil spill. It allows the toxicity in the oil to become more biologically available. The last thing you want is for oil to accumulate in the gills of a lobster.”
In 2013, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers submitted a report to the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board arguing the use of dispersants would provide a “net benefit to the environment” if there was a large oil spill. Much of the industry’s wording in the report matches the language in the new legislation approving Corexit.
But even a 2014 Department of Fisheries and Oceans report called the industry-sponsored study claiming the dispersant’s impact on fish and marine life would be “minimal” as incomplete, unscientific and inaccurate.
https://canadiandimension.com/artic...s-controversial-chemical-for-ocean-oil-spills
www.youtube.com/watch?v=URAFvSYHOEg
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.”
John Davis, director of Clean Ocean Action Committee (a Nova Scotia consortium of fishers and fish plant operators), called the regulations allowing the dispersant’s use “a massive threat to fishing industry” and another example of the power of oil and gas lobbyists in Ottawa.
He says the new regulations are a direct result of Bill C-22, passed by the Harper government in 2015 to expedite the export of bitumen by tankers to foreign markets and supported by industry.
The legal status of dispersant use in Canadian ocean waters had been uncertain because a variety of legislation, including the Fisheries Act, prohibited the spraying of any harmful substance into the marine environment.
But Bill C-22 removed those uncertainties and made it legal for companies and regulators to dump dispersants on an oil spill and pretend they had solved a problem.
But breaking down oil and hiding it in the water column is not a cleanup, said Davis.
“It is sham,” he said. “It doesn’t do anything to clean up an oil spill. It allows the toxicity in the oil to become more biologically available. The last thing you want is for oil to accumulate in the gills of a lobster.”
In 2013, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers submitted a report to the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board arguing the use of dispersants would provide a “net benefit to the environment” if there was a large oil spill. Much of the industry’s wording in the report matches the language in the new legislation approving Corexit.
But even a 2014 Department of Fisheries and Oceans report called the industry-sponsored study claiming the dispersant’s impact on fish and marine life would be “minimal” as incomplete, unscientific and inaccurate.
https://canadiandimension.com/artic...s-controversial-chemical-for-ocean-oil-spills
www.youtube.com/watch?v=URAFvSYHOEg
