The Deepwater disaster recovery very effectively demonstrated the phenomenon of "out of sight out of mind". they dumped almost 2 million gallons of "dispersants" on the oil spill... which was DESIGNED to make the oil heavier than water and sink to the sea bed. it never dissolved anything, it just hid the problem from the public. and all that oil is just sitting on the sea bed.
A dispersant should divide the oil into much smaller particles = larger surface area, which by itself should speed up any natural biodegradation significantly. Of course, once it settles on the sea floor, most of that effect is gone again (it's not dispersed in water anymore). But IF there is something that can consume the oil, dispersing it into microdroplets is not necessarily a bad idea?
Care to enlighten us unfortunate souls who haven't yet read the book, what you mean by that? Or did you intentionally not include any more info to prevent spoilers? ;)
$EvilCompany releases a waste-eating bacteria to cover up their waste dumping. It works, but it might be doing more harm than good. (That's not the synopsis of the book, just the part I'm guessing they're referring to).
I don't know for sure, but I found it interesting that there was such lively debate, and yet what they ended up doing seems to have been one of the few solutions that was intuitively worse than nothing.
Heck man, give Stamets a shot with his oil-eating mushrooms; I thought that was an interesting suggestion.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute says that dispersants caused a drastic reduction in surface volatiles, allowing the cleanup crew to work longer and more efficiently.
> The model showed that, without dispersants, the atmospheric concentration of benzene would have been about 6,000 times higher. Benzene concentrations in the air two meters above the sea surface would have been 13 times higher than the levels considered acceptable to breathe during a 10-hour working day or a 40-hour work week, based on guidelines by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). However, the model showed that with the dispersant injection, atmospheric benzene concentrations were typically about 500 times lower than acceptable NIOSH levels.
