One of the biggest examples of a pollutant entering water and having a significant effect on the water’s quality in the modern day is oil. Oil often spills out into the ocean from oil tankers, offshore oil platforms, and underwater drilling sites, due to maritime accidents or leaks. However, oil can also leak into lakes and rivers from land sources such as oil wells, drill sites and sometimes from car accidents in the form of gasoline. When oil makes enters huge bodies of water, such as oceans, it tends to accumulate on the surface, which puts several species of birds and animals at risk. Oil can often soak into the feathers of a bird it makes contact with, resulting in the bird going blind and being unable to fly, use its sense of smell, or even float on the surface properly. Marine fish that live close to the surface of the ocean could end up accidentally inhaling the oil through their gills or even mistake it for food, effectively poisoning itself. Oil spills on land could end up degrading air quality or even leak into underground water systems which can contaminate sources of drinking water. But just how much oil have humans lost to the oceans at a single period of time? Well I found an article that goes over the 9 biggest oil spills in human history and the volume of oil that was lost was astounding. I’m not going to go over all 9 events in detail as I’ll just be reiterating what the article already says, but I will mention the one that really caught my attention. For example, the second largest oil spill in history occurred in 2010! Nearly 9 years ago! On April 20th 2010, an offshore water platform in the gulf of Mexico sank into the ocean after a well containing natural gas burst, resulting in the gas spilling out and igniting. The resulting fire killed 11 workers and injured 17 others before the platform sank into the ocean two days later, taking an estimated 134 gallons of oil with it. The oil spill wouldn’t be fixed until September 17th. This means that the entire Gulf coast from Texas Texas to Florida was completely coated in oil for nearly 5 months. So a question that I have for this week is: If such an incident happened only 9 years ago then what does this tell you about the efficiency of the prevention methods we have in place today and how could they be improved?
Citations: Rafferty, J. P. (2018). 9 of the Biggest Oil Spills in History. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/list/9-of-the-biggest-oil-spills-in-history
Sasha, if such an incident occurred only 9 years ago, this tells me that the efficiency of the prevention methods are very successful in terms of preventability and safety. In my opinion, you could improve these methods by investing more money into the safety aspect of the potential oil spills that could occur. It is commonly known that the cashflow of oil production is very successful, so the majority of companies can afford this.
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Your man,
Alex Johnstone