BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Would The Use Of Chemical Dispersants In Mauritius Oil Spill Be Considered An Ecocide?

This article is more than 3 years old.

In recent weeks, there have been several major oil spills around the world. An oil slick appeared in one of Venezuela’s national parks at the end of July (and reports of yet another Venezuelan oil spill are coming in on 9 September), the oil supertanker fire off the coast of Sri Lanka on 3 September as well as the major oil spill in Mauritius starting 6 August in the heart of a global biodiversity hotspot.

The secretive nature of the Mauritius Wakashio oil spill cleanup operation has been particularly challenging. Cleanup companies with no local cultural knowledge or biodiversity context have been brought in to perform operations without any independent scientific oversight. The spill took place across multiple sites of internationally protected nature reserves with unique species only found in that part of the world, and if mismanaged, could have very serious consequences for coastal and marine life given the importance of the coral lagoon to Mauritius. Several videos from the last two weeks have emerged on the type of clean up being deployed. There have already been several major (and avoidable) missteps from this lack of local knowledge. Local scientists and international biodiversity specialists (including a former President of Mauritius who is an internationally renown biodiversity scientist herself) has been calling for urgent international intervention from qualified biodiversity specialists and independent supervision of these efforts.

Liquids have been seen sprayed along the Mauritian coastline without any independent verification of what those liquids are. There are concerns that the press statements by the companies employed to perform the clean up have not been fully transparent. Not only has there not been any disclosure on the fees being received for this activity, but more importantly, there is no mention of what independent scientific oversight is being used (there are many highly qualified scientists in Mauritius that are independent of Government).

Off the coast of Sri Lanka, while the initial Sri Lanka and Indian Navy and Coastguard responses have been praised to rapidly put out the fire on the Panama-flagged vessel heading to an Indian Port, the use of chemical dispersants by the Indian Coastguard has now raised several questions about the use of such techniques to clean up oil spills, which often cause more harm than the original oil spill itself.

To understand the implications, the executive director of the ALERT Project, Riki Ott shared her experience working on several major oil spill. The ALERT Project is a project supported by US Environmental NGO, Earth Island Institute, and a co-plaintiff in Earth Island Institute’s lawsuit against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Riki has been providing expertise in this important lawsuit.

Here are the five most important questions on the use of chemical dispersants in the event of an oil spill, and what a country like Mauritius should be doing (certainly, not treating the oil as ‘handcream,’ as the UN ‘expert’ in the country has been advising).

Context: The lawsuits against use of chemical dispersants in oil spills

Earth Island Institute (EII) is a nonprofit environmental organization headquartered in Berkeley, California. The organization was founded by legendary environmentalist David Brower as a way to support activist projects, provide legal aid, share environmental news through an award-winning journal, and build the next generation of environmental stewards through a youth leadership program. 

Riki Ott is executive director of the ALERT Project, a project of Earth Island Institute. Working closely with Earth Island General Counsel Sumona Majumdar, the ALERT Project provided the impetus and expertise to develop an important lawsuit against the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) against the use of chemical dispersants (Protecting Oceans and People from Toxic Chemical Dispersants).

The lawsuit challenges the EPA for its failure to update the obsolete and dangerous National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (the US National Contingency Plan) when responding to oil spills. The lawsuit points out that it is the EPA’s legal duty to maintain an up-to-date National Contingency Plan arises under the US Clean Water Act (CWA).  The current National Contingency Plan, which the EPA last updated in 1994, permits open-ended use of chemical dispersants in response to offshore oil spills.

“Dispersants” are toxic products applied to oil spills with the goal of breaking up oil into smaller droplets to enhance biodegradation. However, overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that dispersants likely do more environmental harm than good, and generally exacerbate a spill’s ecological impact. Further, dispersants have significant adverse human health impacts for oil spill responders and coastal residents. Lessons on chemical dispersants from the BP oil spill revealed that many of the chemicals used were not being documented at the time. There are many images of chemical dispersants being used for oil spills around the world, including in training exercises in Singapore.

The counsel for the plaintiffs (including Earth Island Institute, the ALERT Projects, and others), are Claudia Polsky from the Berkeley Environmental Law Clinic at the UC Berkeley School of Law and Kristen Monsell from the Center for Biological Diversity.

1. A dispersant sounds like a good thing, tell me why NGOs are so upset with its use?

Riki Ott: Dispersants would be a wonderful thing if they performed as well in the field during an actual oil spill response as they do in the lab under controlled conditions. In theory, they work well. In applied practice, they do more harm than good to people and wildlife — as forewarned on the manufacturer-issued Safety Data Sheets. 

Besides being human health hazards, these industrial-strength solvents are keys that open the door for oily poisons to go through the lipid cells of organisms and into the bloodstream and on to the organs. Oil plus dispersant combined are now known to be more harmful than oil alone. Yet the oil industry has said that it will continue to use dispersants as long as government allows them to do so. Why? Because spillers are not held accountable for the long-term cost to human health (or the environment) from dispersant use and because the risk:benefit ratio is biased to favor benefit as it doesn’t count these long-term health externalities. Hence, Earth Island’s lawsuit to update the national emergency response plan for oil, the National Contingency Plan, based on current science and technologies.

There are many reasons why dispersants do not perform in the field as they do in the lab. I gave expert witness testimony on this in 2018. 

It is also important to note that even the EPA does not approve of dispersant use. Instead, the EPA maintains a so-called product schedule that lists products that have passed toxicity and efficacy tests and so may — may — be used during oil spill response.

But EPA also requires that dispersants are clearly labeled with this disclaimer: [PRODUCT NAME] is on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s NCP Product Schedule. This listing does NOT mean that EPA approves, recommends, licenses, certifies, or authorizes the use of [PRODUCT NAME] on an oil discharge. This listing means only that data have been submitted to EPA as required by subpart J of the National Contingency Plan, Sec. 300.915.

After the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a federal court district judge allowed Nalco, the manufacturer of Corexit dispersants, to use the shield defense; i.e., that since government allowed the use of dispersants, industry could not be held liable for human health harms caused by use.

Truly, this is a technology that has run amok! We can do better.

2. Has the EPA always had the same position on dispersants? 

Riki Ott: Yes. EPA has always allowed dispersants. In fact, dispersant use pre-dates the EPA. Dispersants were allowed in the first National Contingency Plan in 1968, developed in response to the Torrey Canyon oil disaster off the western coast of England. EPA was created on December 2, 1970. EPA was delegated authority to be in charge of the NCP and it sort of inherited dispersants. Initially, EPA relied on mechanical containment and removal of oil. Over time, EPA leaned more on dispersants that rely on dispersing oil where, in theory, it can be more readily broken down. Unfortunately, this is not what happens as it kills the oil-eating bacteria and does more harm than good to everything from bacteria and corals up to apex predators, including humans.

Back when I was in undergrad and grad school, I researched the first generation of dispersants at different institutions — the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (now the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences), the University of Malta, the Plymouth Marine Laboratory in England. They were extremely toxic; basically, solvents. That’s why the UK still bans Corexit dispersant use in nearshore and coastal environments. Now industry touts dispersant use in deepwater where their solution to pollution seems to be dilution. However, now the science shows that the products interact with oil to sink it, which is harmful to the ecology.

The Obama administration opened a rulemaking process and proposed several restrictions on dispersant use: ban in cold water (where they are ineffective, so think deep ocean where they were used during the BP disaster and in the Arctic, a region that the Trump administration wants to open for drilling), raise efficacy standards, require more sensitive toxicity testing, etcetera. But the Obama administration didn’t finalize the rules and the Trump administration ignored them. Hence, Earth Island’s lawsuit to finalize what was started.

3. What are alternatives to dispersants?

Riki Ott: By allowing dispersant use, in fact, by even expediting dispersant use through a pre-approval process, the government has inhibited development of more benign environmentally friendly products. That said, the EPA maintains a product schedule that lists products that may be used in oil spill response.

On this list, there are categories of products like bioremediation agents, surface-washing agents, surface-collecting agents, dispersants, etcetera. Really, these other products are seldom used. Corexit 9500 and 9527 have been industry favorites from the beginning — and government continues to allow their use.

4. Where can I find out more?

Riki Ott: On dispersants, I would start with my expert testimonies as I outlined harm from oil, from dispersants, and from oil-dispersants combined from the scientific literature through December 2018. The basics will help you understand the human health risk from the heavy fuel oil, which is concentrated in PAHs - polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons - concentrated in the heavy fuel oil.

To learn more about the phototoxicity of crude oil, which is relevant for Mauritians, I would start with a trusted source and go from there.

Also, I learned on the August 25 webinar that I participated in that the Wakashio spilled oil into a nursery for marine mammals! In my testimony, I summarize the papers on the multi-year U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration studies on live bottlenose dolphins in Barataria Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. This would be relevant to Mauritius.  

5. If you were in Mauritius right now, what actions would you be recommending? 

Riki Ott: First, I would ask a lot of questions and talk with (listen to) a lot of people. The general public: How are they being affected? What do they believe/not believe from the official story? What do they want to learn more about? (I might start with other questions if I was somewhere else, but I really don’t know much about Mauritius. Yet.) 

Second, I would try to learn how many people are symptomatic with common characteristics of oil spill exposures. Workers only? Towns nearest and/or downwind of the spill? 

Third, I would find out what kind of resources the island has in terms of its medical community, media, social media, environmental monitoring, and even scientific and technical capability among its diaspora.

Then, I would try to assemble a team of concerned citizens — academic and lay experts — who have the common good in mind. Independent from industry.

And we would start communicating with people; training citizen-scientists — people to take air and water samples; people to monitor sensitive wildlife habitats; doctors to take urine and blood samples; people to write weekly articles or do blogs on human health risk — on what exposure looks like, how to minimize harm, how to get proper treatment from occupational and environmental medicine (OEM) professionals; getting people to write weekly articles or do blogs on mental health effects and ways to mitigate the trauma; people to take and then do peer listener training workshops; people to contact the veterinary clinics to organize and collect information on sick dogs, cats, birds — think the canary in the coal mine. If domestic animals and people get sick with similar illnesses, diseases, and cancers, and this spikes after the Wakashio spill, it will tell you that Mauritians did not dodge the bullet. It will lead to better safeguards.

People need to organize and collect all these data! 


About Riki Ott:

Riki Ott is a marine toxicologist and former Alaska commercial fisher-ma’am who shares her first-hand experience with the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, oil-spill cleanup, including the use of toxic chemical dispersants and their health impacts on the public, and various regulatory programs, such as the Clean Water Act. She is the executive director of the ALERT Project, a project of Earth Island Institute, and her work is featured in the documentary film The Cost of Silence.