More on the Oil Gush...

http://emergingvisions.blogspot.com

http://www.matteroftrust.org/

One nonprofit has an innovative solution for cleaning up the massive oil spill on the Gulf Coast, using the ultimate renewable resource: human hair. Since its founding in 1998, Matter of Trust has collected donations of human hair and animal fur to clean up after the thousands of oil spills that happen each year. The hair and fur donations are made into mats and booms, which use old nylon stockings to keep clippings together.

Each day, 300,000 pounds of hair and fur are cut in hair salons across the United States. Unneeded hair and fur can be sent to Matter of Trust's headquarters to be assembled into resources that will help clean up Louisiana waters following the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Donations are pouring in from every state in the country to aid the clean up process.

Individuals can organize "hair-raising" events in their communities to collect donations or speak to locate hair stylists and pet groomers about sending in the leftover hair and fur.

http://sites.google.com/a/loclynn.com/step-up/hot-news-1

http://inhabitat.com/2010/05/03/fertilizing-naturally-occuring-bacteria-...

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/2010-05-02-biorem...

Naturally Occuring Bacteria Could Help Clean Oil Spill

Bioremediation: a solution for quickly cleaning environmental messes?

By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
With an oil spill onslaught headed for Gulf shores, you might wonder — whatever happened to those laboratory miracle oil-eating microbes for an instant clean-up?
"They don't exist," says microbiologist Ronald Atlas of the University of Louisville. "They only work in a lab flask. They have never been shown to work in the field."

Why's that? The reason is simple, says Atlas, a pioneer in the field of "bioremediation," using microbes or other biological tools to clean up environmental messes, such as oil spills. "Nature has already evolved microbes better at consuming hydrocarbons than anything we could grow, and when you go out in the ocean and dump some new organisms on a spill, it already is colonized with those better, natural microbes."

When it comes to using such green technologies for clean-ups, "there has been a steep rise in scientific investigations and a real knowledge explosion," writes an international team led by M. N. V. Prasad of India's University of Hyderabad in a recent Environmental Pollution journal. Everything from explosives to toxic metals are cleaned up by spurring natural microbes, not lab-created ones, to dine on the spills.

In oil spills, the first line of defense are the booms, controlled burns, and skimming now underway off Louisiana's coast, as a fleet of rescue workers struggle to contain the growing Deepwater Horizons wellhead spill. Bioremediation for oil spills only comes into play once the oil has landed, Atlas says, particularly in marshes and hard to get to places, away from the sandy, easy-to-scrape beach.

"What we are really doing is adding fertilizers to these locations to speed the natural process," says Atlas, a former head of theAmerican Society for Microbiology. Typically, bacteria that eat hydrocarbons are only found in trace amounts in the environment, but in oil-contaminated soil, they might grow to 10% of the bug population. Fertilizing them typically speeds up their digestion time by three to five times the natural rate, Atlas concluded in a 1995 review in the Marine Pollution Bulletinjournal. "Where it might normally take three years, instead it can take one year," he says.

The 1989 Exxon Valdez clean-up, which took four summers and cost about $2 billion, according to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, offers the closest model to the type of rescue effort ahead for the Gulf Coast, Atlas says, if and when the oil washes ashore. Typically, hydrocarbon-consuming microbes consume the most complex chemicals found in crude oil, benzene and other toxic compounds, last. "Some things take days, some weeks, some years," he says.

One thing to watch out for, Atlas adds, are simple solution, "snake-oil" treatments posing as bioremediation. In Alaska, some entrepreneurs suggested littering beaches with orange peel rinds, as a natural fix for oil spills. "If you use enough oranges, it doesn't smell like oil, but that's not really helping anything."

Copyright 2010 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978211346

Impacts to the physical health of cleanup workers and volunteers

Oil is a hazardous material. Cleanup workers are potentially exposed to multiple toxics. They breathe fumes from oil and, even when issued protective clothing, gloves, and boots, they often end up with oil on their skin. One study found that, among all cleanup workers, people who cleaned birds had the highest incidence of skin lesions from contact with oil (presumably because they removed their gloves so they could better clean the bird’s feathers). In the Exxon Valdez, response cleanup workers removed protective gear because of the heat on warm days. Health risks are not limited only to oil exposure. Detergents, dispersants, and degreasers also pose risk, although many of their ingredients have not been studied extensively or are not known for proprietary reasons.

Many people are enlisted into cleanup work. These can include fishermen and other residents in nearby communities. Unemployed or underemployed people from else where may also join in. Usually, they lack prior training to work with hazardous materials. While they must undergo rapid training to work with hazardous materials, these trainings are limited and they lack experience. Language issues can also hamper training (and medical attention), unless special attention is given to this issue.

Documented health effects among cleanup workers in past events include both acute and chronic ailments, including headaches, nausea, skin rashes, long-term chemical sensitivity, ongoing dizziness, central nervous system damage, dermatitis, leukemia and other blood disease, fetal defects, skin cancer, liver damage, damage to kidneys, chronic respiratory tract irritation and headaches. One of the most common harms to cleanup workers is back injury.

Mental health impacts

Oil spills and spill responses can cause high levels of stress and psychological trauma, including post-traumatic stress. The economic impacts on livelihood and family aspirations, anxieties associated with exposure to toxic chemicals, the stress of engaging in a large scale court battle, and the loss of valued landscape and ecological systems all contribute to stress on coastal residents and clean up workers.

An immediate source of stress to many has to do with residents’ feared changes in livelihoods and place. A sense of home, community, and aesthetics — are important factors in shaping the satisfaction that people feel about where they live (place attachment). This is particularly true for people who make their living while working outdoors. Seeing vast and beautiful natural landscapes fouled by pollution has a harmful effect on people’s psychological wellbeing. When people’s livelihoods are natural resource-based, the effect can be more pronounced. In Prince William Sound, people talked about feeling that a part of them died when the Exxon Valdez oil inundated the area. Dangerous levels of post-traumatic stress were reported among cleanup workers and residents in Alaska. The news talk shows today are already replete with people expressing sadness and anger about this event.

Unemployment and loss of income creates incredible stresses on people’s lives. This can emerge in various ways, from drug and alcohol abuse, marital problems that include; incidences of domestic violence and divorce, children who become disconnected from homes and parents (who may be working long hours and weeks on cleanup), and social conflict in communities.

Long-term pollution creates permanently contaminated communities. Although some of it is metabolized, components of oil can remain in the environment for long periods of time. Oil is still easily found under rocks on the beaches of Prince William Sound. People living in the area have had to give up cherished activities such as subsistence hunting and gathering, which has led to a sense of malaise and anger. There continues to be fear about the long term health effects of low level exposures to themselves and to various species in the ecosystem, including those that formed the basis of the economy, like herring. The lawsuits against Exxon, which took twenty years to resolve, were another source of constant stress for people.

Economic consequences

Studies from the environmental disasters literature show that medium and small-scale businesses are the most vulnerable to stresses associated with interruption of commerce due to limited reserves, the local proximity of patrons, and alternatives While oil spills may increase the numbers of patrons to some businesses, more specialized firms may suffer. These firms are particularly important to small communities as employers and, in many cases, as long-term features of a community’s social and economic landscape.

Self-employed fishermen are obviously likely to be hard hit, particularly if the fishing ban remains in place for the major fishing season or more than a year. During previous interruptions, boat owners saw their crew leave and take other permanent jobs. Even when the fishing grounds were re-opened, the crew did not return. Boat owners must also maintain insurance on boats, even when they are tied up at port, a cost that must be borne for the duration of the fishing ban. When fishing permit values decline, financing may be hard to obtain. Bankruptcies can occur even when compensation is forthcoming, because fishermen find it impossible to wait. Moreover, fishing supports a large on-shore support industry including ice makers, box makers, fish processors, engine repair shops, and so on. When fishermen don’t have catch or money, this entire commodity chain from fisher to final retailer is likely to suffer. The tighter the linkages of a business to the catch from a local/regional fishery, the faster the impacts will be passed on.

Regional economic effects can be felt as well. Stigmatization of regional seafood is promoted by fears of contaminated or tainted seafood. It can have immediate and lasting effects on seafood processors, distributors, and retailers in an area much wider than that affected by the spill. Counteracting the stigmatization of a product can take significant advertising and outreach expenditures.