BP oil spill: death and devastation – and it's just the start
It could take months or years for the true impact of the spill on surrounding ecosystems to emerge
Oil floats around a rig at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Photograph: Jae C. Hong/AP
The White House says the BP oil spill is probably the greatest environmental disaster the US has faced, but the true impact on surrounding ecosystems could take months or even years to emerge. Experts say the unprecedented depth of the spill, combined with the use of chemicals that broke the oil down before it reached the surface, pose an unknown threat.
"It's difficult to marshal resources to do a thorough job of charting what the impacts are," Jeffrey Short, an environmental chemist who worked on the effects of the Exxon Valdez spill, told Nature magazine. "It's especially difficult when weird things happen to catch the scientific community bysurprise. That's clearly the case here."
Louisiana, the nearest state to the leaking well, some 42 miles offshore, has been the most impacted. The state's governor, Bobby Jindal, said more than 100 miles of its 400-mile coast had so far been polluted.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/31/...
