Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Still Detectable 10 Years Later, Scientists Say

The oil spill was a long-term problem. A new report shows that 10 years after the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, some marsh is still covered in oil.

Desperate attempts were made to clean up the crude oil that had spilled into the environment after the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A small amount of oil was recovered. Some of it was skimmed. Some was dispersed and others evaporated.

Lots stayed around.

Many of the chemicals in the oil pollution were altered by hungry microbes and the sun. The crude oil compounds were re-made. Their physical and chemical properties were altered.

The report states that larger compounds were particularly resistant to weathering. It's likely to persist this day.

If not removed by response personnel, the residue can remain in environments for extended time, causing long-term disruptions of impacted areas.

Almost 40 years after the initial disaster, oil remnants from an oil spill were found on the peninsula.

Shorelines along the northern Gulf have been affected by a sticky substance that resembles moderate to heavy crude oil.

Researchers think that crude oil that wasn't cleaned up and didn't evaporate gradually ended up in the water column. These chemicals would have been carried by the tides.

Most of the crude oil compounds had been altered by various processes after the spill.

The effects of crude oil compounds on the environment are not known.

Edward Overton of Louisiana State University says that the oil's compounds are a type of material that can be degraded by sunlight and marinebacteria.

Oil spills release a lot of chemicals quickly, and most damage from oil spills occurs quickly after the spill.

Damage doesn't stop there. The chemicals left from the oil spill lingered in the marsh.

There was a highly insoluble coating detected in the Gulf by 2020. It is likely that the pollution persisted because these locations are not accessible to mechanical clean up equipment.

They had an effect on wildlife for all those years.

The toxic effect could be caused by the way crude oil weathers. PAHs are known to accumulate in their tissues, and some components become more prone to reacting in animals.

We don't know much about what happens to crude oil in the environment over the course of many years. Negative impacts on wildlife are still being seen.

In 2021, scientists announced that pollution from the Deepwater spill was still impacting marine life and causing low reproduction rates for local animals.

The company responsible for this long-term damage is not worse off than if the spill had never happened, according to a study.

The better we understand the chemicals and their chemical reactivity as well as their physical properties, the better we will be able to mitigate oil spills.

The paper will help expand our understanding of the chemicals found in oil and how they can cause environmental damage.

There was a study published.