While BP has stopped the Gulf oil leak, at least for now, the company is coming under harsh criticism in Congress for the way it's gone about cleaning up the oil spill.
As clean up crews last week reported much of the spilled oil has disappeared from the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) released a letter blasting the oil company for using too much dispersant. Markey said BP used thousands of gallons of the chemical each day to try to break up the oil.
"BP often carpet-bombed the ocean with these chemicals and the Coast Guard allowed them to do it," Markey said in the letter.
Attorneys Stuart Smith and Mike Stag, and toxicologist Dr. William Sawyer joined in the criticism of BP, saying the toxic chemical components from crude may pose serious problems for fisheries.
The three say the dispersants don't make the oil go away, but simply hide it, concealing it underwater. The dispersants themselves, they say, cause other problems.
"Dispersants also leave behind a witch's brew of other potentially-dangerous chemicals after interacting with crude oil in water," Smith said. "Not only do these toxic components damage the environment, but they introduce potentially-serious human health and marine environmental problems."
Sawyer says Louisianans can expect to experience long-term effects for some time, not only to their health, but also their ecosystem and way of life. And the real problems can't necessarily be seen, he says.
Toxic soup
"When you fly over the Macondo site where the Deepwater Horizon rig was located, the water looks like a gelatinous toxic soup thanks to this mix of dispersants and oil," he said.
The attorneys and the scientist say dispersants were meant to be used at the surface of oil spills. Instead, they say, millions of gallons of Corexit were used at the Macondo wellhead site to prevent the oil spill from surfacing. As a result, they say the dispersant has caused as much as 70 percent of the spill to remain hidden from view.
To date, Smith, Stag and Sawyer claim BP has applied nearly two million gallons of Corexit dispersant. They say documented measurements of some of these chemicals are in great excess of established and risk-based lethal levels.
