What Are Dispersants Doing? “We Just Don’t Know”

Oregonian columnist Steve Duin is part of the PDX 2 Gulf Coast project and covering issues in the Gulf region for his home publication. We’ll be cross-posting sections of his articles throughout the trip.

Michael Blum is an all-star research ecologist at Tulane University.

His lab overlooks the St. Charles’ campus quad, some of the most valuable collegiate real estate in New Orleans.  He has made guest appearances on The Rachel Maddow Show, talking about the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.  He spent four years working for the Environmental Protection Agency, put in a tour of duty at the Smithsonian’s Tropical Research Center in Panama, and has attracted millions in Department of Defense funding for his work on how the endangered species on DoD lands react to environmental stress.

He is a thoughtful, cautious, no-nonsense student of the impact of those 200 million gallons of oil that British Petroleum pumped into the Gulf waters, and one of the few BP hasn’t bought off with lucrative bonus deals and confidentiality agreements.

And that’s precisely why it was both surprising and instructive how often Blum answered a question about the shotgun marriage of oil and dispersants in those troubled waters Sunday evening by shaking his head and saying, “We just don’t know.”

And he is skeptical of anyone — including BP and the Obama Administration — who draws more optimistic or concise conclusions about the ongoing clean-up.

Read the full article here.

[Image: Shannon Wheeler]