Researchers Still Finding Residue From Massive 2010 BP Oil Spill

Ten years after the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers have found that there is still residual oil in the water.

A decade after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers found oil in the water.

There were relatively small amounts of oil left over from the spill. The way in which the oil was transformed by sunlight and ocean organisms could have a huge impact on future oil spills.

Water-soluble chemicals dissolved quickly into the sea and were biodegraded by marine organisms, but this was not the case for all of the spilled oil's components, according to a post written by a Louisiana State University professor. Oily layers covered the shorelines grasses and some particles even sank to the seafloor.

The complex degradation process that occurred in some of the oil's components may prolong a spill's effects.

Light crude oil can form water-in-oil emulsions after weathering by sunlight, which can prolong their residence time and potential for negative effects in the environment. After oxidation, the oil's aromatic compounds can be toxic.

These toxic properties may cause different problems for local wildlife than the initial impacts from oil spills that we see on television, such as the widely-shared images of birds being coated with slick black oil during the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

The name itself is a catch-all for a very complex mixture of many thousands of distinct chemical species. Predicting what will happen when disaster strikes is difficult because oil from one region is different from oil from another.

We don't know much about how crude oil degrades in a natural environment.

The environmental circumstances surrounding specific spills greatly affect how quickly the compounds can react, what they cover or coat, and how much oxygen can be taken up in critical habitats. Understanding what was spilled and the environmental conditions of the spill is required for generalization.

The researchers hope that their study will open the door to further studies on the long-term effects of oil spills and hopefully contribute to finding new ways to mitigate their devastating effects.

The 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is still being tracked.

Scientists have found tissue deformities in seafood that is linked to the oil spill.