Biggest disaster in history?

An underwater robot bumping into a vent at the Deepwater Horizon site in the Gulf forced BP to remove the cap that’s been containing a portion of the spillage – meaning that oil was gushing out unhindered for hours. Luckily, the cap is back on thanks to remote-controlled submarines. The cap had been off for much of the day, allowing up to 104,000 gallons per hour of black oil to gush into the Gulf.

Meanwhile, a report prepared for Russian President Medvedev by Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources has warned that the BP oil spill in the Gulf may soon be the biggest environmental disaster in human history, threatening the whole Eastern U.S. with “total destruction”.

Russian scientists are basing their apocalyptic destruction assessment due to BP’s use of millions of gallons of the chemical dispersal agent known as Corexit 9500 which is being pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters and designed, this report says, to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak that is now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.

The dispersal agent Corexit 9500 is a solvent originally developed by Exxon and now manufactured by the Nalco Holding Company of Naperville, Illinois that is four times more toxic than oil (oil is toxic at 11 ppm (parts per million), Corexit 9500 at only 2.61ppm).

In a report written by Anita George-Ares and James R. Clark for Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc. titled “Acute Aquatic Toxicity of Three Corexit Products: An Overview” Corexit 9500 was found to be one of the most toxic dispersal agents ever developed. Even worse, according to this report, with higher water temperatures, like those now occurring in the Gulf of Mexico, its toxicity grows.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in discovering BP’s use of this dangerous dispersal agent ordered BP to stop using it, but BP refused stating that their only alternative to Corexit 9500 was an even more dangerous dispersal agent known as Sea Brat 4.