Starship Asterisk*

Another oil leak, unrelated to the Deepwater Horizon blowout, hit Louisiana's coastal waters yesterday when a dredge barge being towed by a tugboat hit a shallow well. Photos show oil gushing more than 6 metres into the air.

The accident occurred some about a 100 kilometres south of New Orleans in the already hard-hit Barataria bay. Deepwater clean-up vessels were dispatched to the site and responders laid out some 1800 metres of boom to contain the spill.

It's not clear how much oil actually spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, but unlike its big brother out to sea this spill appears to have petered out by midday.

On the bright side, said Thad Allen, the retired coastguard admiral tasked with coordinating the government's response to the Deepwater spill, everybody was ready for action when the spill occurred. "One of the positive things, I suppose, about having this response going on is we have a significant amount of resources... there's skimming equipment close by and booming equipment," he said.

It all makes one wonder just how many little leaks - both natural and unnatural - regularly go unnoticed. Just over a week ago, Allen had to explain that leaks appearing 5 kilometres from the Deepwater well head were also unrelated to the blowout.

Engineers moved ahead on Sunday with preparations for a well "kill" operation that officials hope will permanently plug the oil leak causing the worst US environmental disaster.

A major vessel charged with drilling a relief well to finally stop the BP oil spill arrived back at the Gulf of Mexico well site on Saturday after briefly evacuating due to a tropical storm.

US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said the first chance to seal the well for good could come in the next few days, as response crews quickly scaled operations back up after the storm fizzled.

The returning drill rig, Development Driller 3 (DD3), was among some 10 ships that evacuated the area ahead of Tropical Storm Bonnie. It was to begin reattaching to the well site immediately, according to the US official overseeing the spill response.

A cap over the wellhead has shut in leaking oil since July 15.

The X Prize Foundation launches a competition this week promising millions of dollars for winning ways to clean up crude oil from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The nonprofit group will hold a press conference in Washington on Thursday to reveal details of an Oil Cleanup X Challenge inspired by the disaster.

It added that the competition is "designed to inspire entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists worldwide to develop innovative, rapidly deployable, and highly efficient methods of capturing crude oil from the ocean surface."

A US foundation that helped launch private spaceflight Thursday turned its gaze and pocketbook towards Earth, unveiling a 1.4-million-dollar contest to find new ways to clean up oil spills.

The year-long Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge, named for the wife of Google chairman Eric Schmidt who put up the 1.4-million-dollar purse and the X Prize Foundation which is organizing the competition, kicks off Sunday.

Frustrated at watching "the messy, uncoordinated" attempts to mop up oil from the massive BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico using outdated technology, the contest aims to inspire new ways to clean up future spills, Schmidt said.
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Teams will submit a blueprint for spill-fighting technology online on the website of the X Prize Foundation (xprize.org).
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A panel of experts will evaluate the entries for feasibility, cost, how well they lend themselves to large scale deployment, efficiency and eco-friendliness among other criteria, and the field will be whittled down by mid-2011 to a few teams of finalists.
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The teams will have to clean up oil-tainted water, and the winners will get at least one million dollars. Runners-up and third place teams will earn 300,000 and 100,000 dollars respectively.

Engineers Saturday readied a plan to permanently seal a damaged Gulf of Mexico well, despite delays to the process caused by debris left behind by a recent tropical storm.

As the work continued, incoming BP boss Bob Dudley vowed his company would not abandon residents affected by the spill after the well is finally sealed.

BP hopes to drown the well in an operation dubbed a "static kill," in which mud and cement will be injected down into the ruptured wellhead via a cap installed on July 15.

Dudley on Friday said the operation had been pushed back a day, saying "we are hopeful by Tuesday the static kill will have been performed."

The US pointman on the crisis, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, said Friday the delay was needed to allow engineers to clear debris from the damaged wellhead caused by Tropical Storm Bonnie, which briefly halted spill operations.

But BP senior vice president Kent Wells said the company was confident the static kill would proceed successfully.

A cap in place for two weeks has shown no sign of leaks, "giving us more confidence that this well has integrity," which is a positive sign for the operation, Wells said at a technical briefing Friday.

Wells said BP hopes the static kill will be able to overcome the flow of oil, but that a second sealing method -- via an intercept through a relief well -- would go ahead afterwards regardless.

BP said the relief well is likely to intersect the existing well deep below the ocean floor within eight to 10 days, allowing the second sealing process -- a bottom kill -- by the end of August.

As BP inched closer to permanently sealing the blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, congressional investigators railed against the company and Coast Guard for liberal use of toxic chemicals that helped disperse the oil, but at unknown expense to sea life.

The only thing keeping millions more gallons of oil out of the Gulf of Mexico right now is a rush job: an experimental cap that has held for more than two weeks but was never meant to be permanent. As soon as this week, crews will be pumping in some insurance.

A giant vacuum powered by a lawnmower engine may not seem like a tool for scientific study, but salt marsh experts from the University of Houston are using the contraption to study the effects of the oil spill on insects and spiders along the Gulf Coast.

As the acute phase of the Gulf oil spill transitions to a chronic phase, marked by long-term challenges to the public health, environment and economy, researchers at Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness interviewed over 1,200 adults living within 10 miles of the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Mississippi, in collaboration with the Children's Health Fund and The Marist Poll of Poughkeepsie, NY. The survey, conducted by telephone in July, after the Deepwater Horizon well was capped, found evidence of significant and potentially lasting impact of the disaster on the health, mental health, and economic fortunes of residents and their children and on the way they live their everyday lives. The findings have implications for health and economic policies going forward.

Among the key survey findings:

• Over 40% of adults living within ten miles of the coast said they have experienced direct exposure to the oil spill or clean-up effort. Within this group, nearly 40% reported physical symptoms of skin irritations and respiratory problems, which they attributed to the oil spill.
• Over one-third of parents report that their children have experienced either physical symptoms or mental health distress as a consequence of the oil spill.
• One in five households report a drop in income since the oil spill, and 8% report job loss. These losses were most likely to hit those who were already economically vulnerable: households with incomes under $25,000 a year.
• More than one-quarter (26.6%) of coastal residents said they thought they might have to move away from the Gulf Coast. Among those earning less then $25,000, the figure was 36.3%. Children whose parents think they may move are almost three times more likely to have mental health distress than are children whose parents do not expect to move.
• More than 70% of parents report children spending less time swimming, boating and playing in the sand; 21% say their kids are spending less overall time playing outdoors.
• Coastal residents had more favorable assessments and trust in their local and state officials and in the U.S. Coast Guard than they did in BP or other Federal agencies.
• Slightly over half of all coastal residents felt that BP's response was "poor," and 41.3% said that the President's response to the oil spill was poor.

BP began Tuesday its long-awaited "static kill" to plug the worst oil leak in history, pouring heavy drilling fluids to hold back the gushing crude in its runaway well.

Last week the debate about the fate of oil in the gulf took, according to major media reports, an optimistic turn. Now Representative Ed Markey (D–MA) is raising questions about federal oversight of dispersant use in the gulf, and a Senate committee is holding a hearing on the issue on Wednesday.

Scientists at last week's congressional briefing said some important risks to the undersea environment remain:

• Oil drops could wreak havoc on tuna eggs and larvae.
• By virtue of their size, small oil drops could be deadly.
• Vast undersea plumes may have gone undetected.
• Dispersants may be chemical chaperones for poisons.
• Unknown-unknowns (unk-unks).

Just over 100 days after oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, BP says they will embark, later today or tomorrow, on a “static kill” effort that may just seal the leak once and for all.

Perhaps remembering the company’s repeated failures to stanch the flow over these past months, some officials are calling the maneuver only one possible solution. National Incident Commander Thad Allen said:

• “Static kill is not the end all, be all.” [The Telegraph]

Still some hope it is; said Darryl Bourgoyne, director of the Petroleum Engineering Research Lab at Louisiana State University:

• “It could be the beginning of the end.” [AP]

Temporary fix or permanent plug, here’s how BP will do it:

Step 1 — Temporary Cap (Check)

As DISCOVER blogger Andrew Moseman put it on July 16th, “Do you hear that? That’s the sound of oil not gushing uncontrollably into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s leak, for the first time in nearly three months.” BP has had a temporary seal in place for two weeks and it seems to be holding. But leaving just that seal in place would be foolhardy, experts say: ... [New York Times]

Step 2 — Static Kill: First Mud, Then Concrete

While the temporary cap keeps the oil under control from above, the static kill will require the company to block the flow from underneath the seal–a “bottom kill”–providing multiple layers to protect the Gulf from more oil. First engineers will pump mud underneath the cap. If the pressure remains stable and the mud forces oil down into its reservoir, then they will follow the mud with concrete. Engineers installed the lines to pump these materials into the Gulf’s depths during a similar (failed) top kill effort. ... [AP]

Step 3 — Relief Wells and Clean Up

Even if the static kill appears to succeed, BP will continue to dig two relief wells as another backup. The relief wells are expected to intersect the original pipe just above the spot where it enters the oil reservoir (about 18,000 feet below the ocean’s surface), and will be used to pour in mud and cement.

Of course, another next step is to continue cleaning up the oil. As many reported last week, that oil seems to be disappearing from the Gulf’s surface, apparently as a result of evaporation, oil-eating bacteria, dispersion from storms, and clean-up efforts, such as controlled burns. But as tar balls continue to land on Gulf shores, some question the oil’s deeper damage. ... [New York Times]

What do you get when you mix oil and dispersants? A mixture that doesn’t seem to be more toxic than oil alone, the EPA said yesterday. Their statement came after a second round of testing eight oil dispersants.

The EPA tested the response of two sensitive Gulf species, the mysid shrimp and a small fish called the inland silverside, which they exposed to mixtures of dispersants plus oil and to oil alone. ... [EPA statement]

Chemical dispersants help break down oil, in theory putting it in a form easier for microbes to consume. Still, dispersants are toxic, and BPs unprecedented use of huge amounts of Corexit worried EPA officials, who were uncertain of the chemical’s long-term effects. Reportedly, BP and the United States Coast Guard have not used dispersants since July 19, when the leaking well was successfully fitted with a temporary cap. ... [CNN]

Still, Anastas says EPA scientists have more research to do on the lingering effects of dispersants: [New York Times]

As we reported yesterday, since the temporary cap was put in place oil slicks have been quickly disappearing from the surface of Gulf waters. Some say that the oil evaporated, that sunlight broke it down, or that the dispersants helped microbes eliminate it: ... [The Telegraph]

But the fact that the oil is quickly disappearing from the water’s surface doesn’t have everyone celebrating. As Discovery News reports, researchers have seen such vanishing acts before only for the oil to reappear on shore, as happened with the 1979 Ixtoc I oil gusher which also used dispersants. Larry McKinney, who worked on that spill, said he fears that the oil will mix with sediment and sink to the continental shelf. ... [Discovery News]

Coral populations in the Gulf of Mexico could fall because of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster – from contact not with oil but with the dispersant that's supposed to get rid of it.

Laboratory tests suggest that Corexit 9500A, the dispersant used by BP to tackle the largest offshore oil spill in US history, stops coral larvae latching onto the surfaces where they usually mature.

Officials recently declared the Gulf oil spill no longer poses a risk to the
East Coast. But marine scientists are worried about the oil we can't see.

• Government officials recently said the Gulf oil spill no longer poses a risk to the East Coast.
• Marine scientists say even if oil isn't visible on the water's surface, there may be plumes of it underwater.
• Some argue dispersants may actually inhibit microbes from eating up the oil since it may mix with sediment.

With its vast 1.5 million acres of mangrove swamps, sawgrass prairies and subtropical jungles, could the Florida Everglades--the famous river of grass--be affected by the Gulf oil spill?

While current estimates are that little if any oil entered the Loop Current or reached the Everglades, this area is a significant national natural resource, and to study the effects of the spill on seagrasses and mangrove forests in and near the Everglades, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a rapid response grant to scientists affiliated with NSF's Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site."

The area is one of 26 such NSF LTER sites around the world.
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In their NSF-funded study, Fourqurean and Gaiser will measure hydrocarbon concentrations and food web structure at sites that may be directly impacted by the oil spill, and assess how these factors change with the arrival of oil.
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The work will help design future oil spill clean-up efforts, says Gaiser, by defining the fate of oil-derived compounds in seagrass and mangrove ecosystems.
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The research will also help determine how these compounds influence the food webs that support the economic and cultural infrastructure of the south Florida region, says Fourqurean.

They seem to have vanished. Just two weeks after BP capped its broken Deepwater Horizon well, the plumes of dispersant and oil in the Gulf of Mexico's deep waters that were causing huge anxiety among biologists have gone away. Does that mean worries over ongoing ecological damage are overblown?

"We can't find oil at the surface and, as of this week, we cannot find it deep down either," says Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, whose research has focused on the area within 100 kilometres of the wellhead.

Hazen thinks he can explain why the plumes are gone. He had previously collected water samples from inside and outside of the plumes, which he kept at 4 °C – the coldest temperature along the floor of the Gulf. Within days, the microbial populations began to shift in favour of those able to break down oil.

The findings tally with those of other ecologists working in the field. Hazen also found that the oil disappeared faster still in the presence of Corexit 9500A, the dispersant used by BP in the Gulf waters.

Click to view full size image

Fully three-quarters of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that spewed from BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico bypassed efforts to collect it or burn it off, according to a government report released Wednesday morning. The bulk of the spill evaporated, dissolved into seawater, drifted onto beaches, or remains dispersed beneath the surface. Offshore, at least, it is rapidly being broken down by oil-eating microbes.

Only a third of the spilled oil was removed or chemically dispersed. Catching it at the wellhead prevented 17% from entering the environment. Burning at the surface removed 5%, and skimming caught 3%. The controversial use of dispersants to emulsify the oil and therefore accelerate its natural degradation managed to disperse 8% of the oil. That made for a total of 33% of the oil that was dealt with by responders.

Natural processes removed or dispersed about 41% of the spilled oil, according to the report. A quarter evaporated into the atmosphere or dissolved in seawater. Sixteen percent dispersed into microscopic droplets as it blasted from the wellhead. That left 26% on the surface as sheen or tarballs, washed ashore, or buried in shoreline sand and sediments. The 50% of the spill that remains in the gulf or on the shore, the report emphasizes, is being degraded naturally. NOAA has graphed these figures in a pie chart.

Federal scientists say about one-quarter of the BP oil that spilled out of its broken well remains.

A new government report says nearly three-quarters of the oil - more than 152 million gallons - has either been collected at the well by BP's cap, burned, skimmed, chemically dispersed, naturally deteriorated, evaporated or dissolved.

That leaves about 53.5 million gallons in the gulf. The amount remaining - or washed up on the shore - still is more than four times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

Federal officials say about a quarter of the oil evaporated or dissolved in the warm gulf waters, the same way sugar dissolves in water. Another one-sixth naturally dispersed, because of the way it leaked from the well. Another one-sixth was burned, skimmed or dispersed using controversial chemicals.

© 2010 AP

The BP oil spill isn’t over. But, as CNN says, we could be at the beginning of the end.

The first part of BP’s “static kill,” in which it used mud to try to plug the leak, appears to have worked well and stemmed the flow of oil. Last night National Incident Commander Thad Allen gave the OK for the second part: pumping concrete. That could begin today. ... [ABC News]

This business of pumping mud probably sounds familiar. That’s because it’s basically the same thing BP tried to do many weeks ago with its “[urlhttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/06/01/with-top-kill-a-failure-bp-goes-back-to-the-containment-dome-plan/]top kill[/url]” maneuver. This time, though, the mud seems to be working, probably because the temporary cap BP put on the leak in July made it easier to smother the oil flow.

Hopefully their optimism isn’t misplaced, but it’s nice to see some hope on the horizon. While BP continues work on this plug, the relief wells near their target. They should intersect the well sometime later this month.

Now more attention turns to the other side of the disaster—cleaning it up. This week the U.S. government issued a report that sounded like good news, that it has accounted for most of the reported 5 million barrels of oil from the leak. Not everyone, though, was convinced by this rosy declaration. ... [Houston Chronicle]

As we’ve seen over and over during the hundred-plus days of the BP oil spill, getting accurate figures is tricky. The first few guesses of the amount of oil leaking per day were wildly underestimated, and oceanographer Ian MacDonald tells Discovery News that the government’s announcement is based on more guesswork, not direct measurement.

The overall mood at the White House yesterday was upbeat with the news that there’s seemingly less of a risk of ecological impacts of oil and that the well is about to be shut down for good. “There is a negligible amount of oil at the surface,” said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration head Jane Lubchenco in a conference with reporters, adding that repeated scientific cruises have failed to find any on the floor of the ocean—or in the Florida Keys, as feared.

“This is very good news. Many of the doomsday scenarios have not and will not come to fruition,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. While the daily press conference sometimes lasts 20 minutes or less, today’s ran for nearly 2 hours as the Obama Administration sought to get the word out on the conditional good news.

Lubchenco smiled and nodded slowly when a reporter asked if the “oil clouds” were lifting within the Administration. But echoing concerns from federal and independent scientists about the fate of the oil in the water column, she said, “The oil that is in tiny droplets may be toxic. … We do remain concerned about the oil in the subsurface." She added, “Effects of this spill will likely linger for decades,” although she said that it could take a long time to quantify those effects.

BP said Wednesday that it had succeeded in plugging a ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, signalling an end to the worst spill in the United States' history.

Specially treated waste material from electric power plants will soon be used to clean up oil in the Gulf thanks to the ingenuity of a University of Central Florida professor.

Taxpayers took another hit, this one indirect, from the oil spill caused by the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion through insurance claims related to the disaster.

BP has shrugged off a potential public relations hit when the energy giant said it may drill a new well in the Gulf of Mexico reservoir which fed one of the world's worst oil spills.

US officials on Sunday urged further study of the damage done to the environment by BP's broken well, and said clean-up efforts must continue despite claims that much of the oil had vanished from the Gulf of Mexico.
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The Gulf of Mexico is known for its shrimp, crab, oysters, and dozens of species of fish. In the past, the fertile Mississippi Delta region provided for some 40 percent of US seafood production.

Approximately one quarter of the Gulf is closed to fishing as a result of the BP spill.
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On Friday, the FDA said it had "determined that the chemical dispersant currently used to combat the Deepwater Horizon... have a low potential for bioconcentration in seafood species."
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BP said this week it has cemented closed the runaway well, which ruptured after an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig April 20 that killed 11 workers and unleashed the biggest maritime spill on record.

The government's point man on the Gulf oil spill says BP has resumed drilling a relief well meant to intersect the blown-out well and seal it for good.
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Work on the well, which is 18,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, started less than two weeks after the rig sank.

Crews will need to dig about 100 feet down and about 4 feet to the side to intersect the capped well, and the work will be done carefully and in stages.

Once the wells have met, crews will pump more mud and cement into the crippled well as part of a "bottom kill" meant to permanently seal the well.

Experts warn getting two shafts to intersect at the same point so far below ground is tough, and BP said it may take more than one attempt to make the wells meet.

Crews finishing work meant to forever stop oil from leaking from a blown-out undersea well into the Gulf may have one more hurdle to overcome: the weather.

The National Hurricane Center is watching a cluster of thunderstorms in the far eastern Gulf of Mexico that forecasters say may pass near the oil spill site, just as BP's drills the final 100 feet of a relief well that it hopes - if the weather holds up - will intersect with the broken one as early as Friday.

The system could blow into a tropical storm, but forecasters don't think it'll turn into a hurricane, and BP hasn't made plans to suspend drilling.
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Finishing the new well and sealing the broken one with mud and cement should be the final act of the three-month oil spill drama that has upended the lives of fishermen and others along the Gulf Coast.

One man will guide a drill more than two miles beneath the seafloor and three miles from the surface, trying to hit a target less than half the size of a dartboard. The drill is about as wide as a grapefruit.

NOAA has reopened more than 13,000 square kilometers of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing. "Since July 3, NOAA data have shown no oil in [this] area," a NOAA release says. "Fish caught in the area and tested by NOAA experts have shown no signs of contamination."

In general, food scientists are relieved that traces of the most dangerous constituents of oil, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, have been hard to detect in gulf fish and shellfish.

"Everyone's surprised they're not finding more PAHs in seafood," says Jim Bradford of analytical chemistry groupAOAC. In retrospect, were the risks to seafood exaggerated in May and June? Bradford says no, "I don't think it was overblown. I think we overestimated the short term impact, and I think we're underestimating the long-term impact. … The safety of gulf seafood will be in question for some time."

Environmental watchdog Greenpeace on Wednesday announced the launch of a three-month expedition on which researchers will analyze the impact of the massive BP oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.

A Greenpeace ship sets sail Thursday from Saint Petersburg, Florida, and will tour the southern tip of Florida and its Keys before heading northward to the area of the failed oil well ... The ship MY Arctic Sunrise will host independent scientists who will be researching the impacts of oil and chemical dispersants on Gulf ecosystems and marine life ... Scientists will look at the ecosystem as a whole from plankton on the surface to coral reefs and other life as well as the gulf floor ...

The environment has often suffered from the catastrophic effects of an oil spill, the most recent example being the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The search for ways to remove oil from polluted water is therefore urgent. US scientists working with George John have now developed a novel gelator that solidifies the oil into a gel from which it can easily be later reclaimed.

• Angewandte Chemie (15 Jul 2010) DOI: 10.1002/anie.201002095

BP's runaway well has been sealed, but US officials said Friday they are moving ahead with plans to make sure it's truly "killed" by pumping cement in through a relief well under the Gulf of Mexico.
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Pressure tests showed that the well no longer has "direct communication with the reservoir" thanks to a top kill operation which pumped drilling mud and cement down through the wellhead, Allen said.
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About 1,000 barrels of oil are believed to be trapped in the well's annulus -- the space between the inner well tubing and the outer casing -- and it's possible that some of the cement pumped in from above effectively sealed the annulus off from the surface.

But to be sure, and reflecting the White House's consistent line that the relief well was the ultimate solution, a decision was made to continue with the so-called "bottom kill" operation.

"Everyone is in agreement that we need to proceed with the relief well. The question is how to do that," Allen told reporters.

One possibility could be to install a new blowout preventer on top of the capped well to make sure oil doesn't escape if a mistake is made during the bottom kill operation, Allen said.

He did not provide an estimated date for completion but said it will take about 96 hours to finish the bottom kill, which had been delayed for a few days because of an approaching storm, once operations begin.

Researchers measuring impacts of short- and long-term exposure in extensive Gulf Coast marshes

As oil and dispersants wash ashore in coastal Louisiana salt marshes, what will their effects be on these sensitive ecosystems?

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a rapid response grant to scientist Eugene Turner of Louisiana State University and colleagues to measure the impacts on Gulf Coast salt marshes.

The researchers will track short-term (at the current time, and again at three months) and longer-term (at 11 months) exposure to oil and dispersants.

The coast of Louisiana is lined with extensive salt marshes whose foundation is two species of Spartina grass.
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In their NSF study, the biologists will document changes in these critically-important Spartina grasses, as well as in the growth of other salt marsh plants, and in marsh animals and microbes.

Field investigators will collect samples three times at 35 to 50 sites and analyze the oil and dispersants after each expedition.

The first field effort is now underway.
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Salt marsh stressors, such as those from oil spills, can have dramatic, visible, and immediate direct impacts, on marshes and surrounding uplands.
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The research is a benchmark study in salt marsh ecosystem change, and will answer key questions about salt marsh stability.

The oil spill along the United States Gulf Coast poses health risks to volunteers, fishermen, clean-up workers and members of coastal communities, according to a new commentary by UCSF researchers who spent time in the region and are among the first to look into health problems caused by the oil spill. The good news, the authors say, is that one of the risk factors, coastal air quality, is improving now that the oil leak has been stopped.

The commentary will be published online August 16th and in the September 8, 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The goal of the article is to inform physicians and coastal communities about the immediate and long-term health risks posed by toxic vapors, oil slicks, tar balls and contaminated seafood. The authors hope to encourage community members to protect themselves and seek treatment if symptoms from oil contamination occur.

Source: University of California - San Francisco

Fish, shrimp and other catches from the Gulf of Mexico are being ground up to hunt for minute traces of oil in what's considered unprecedented safety testing - sort of a "CSI" for seafood that's far more reassuring than the sniff test that made all the headlines.

And while the dispersant that was dumped into the massive oil spill has consumers nervous, health regulators contend there's no evidence it builds up in seafood - although they're working to create a test for it, just in case.

©2010 The Associated Press.

Georgia scientists say their analysis shows that most of that BP oil the government said was gone from the Gulf of Mexico is still there.

The scientists say as much as 80 percent of the oil still lurks under the surface. The Georgia team said it is a misinterpretation of data to claim that oil that is dissolved is actually gone. The report from University of Georgia and other scientists came from an analysis of federal estimates.

Earlier this month federal scientists said that only about a quarter of the oil remained and the rest was either removed, dissolved or dispersed.

©2010 The Associated Press

Source: Georgia Sea Grant Oil Spill Update, 17 Aug 2010

• Outcome/Guidance from Georgia Sea Grant Program: Current Status of BP Oil Spill