How do you clean up an oil spill?

the Robert Yuruke of podcasting. I'm just an old probe by now. I think it's like the third or fourth time we've said Robert York in the show. Has it ever been recorded before? What? Robert? Robert? Yeah? Okay, recorded and release, my friend. This podcast is going to bum people out, especially if you have any hardness for the environment.

Pelicans sand Trump trimpers. This is the local economy we've been We probably should have done this weeks ago, but we took our time getting around to it because Josh was a being all Japanese so oil spills. It's high time we tackled this it's high tide or oil spill clean up? Brother? Yeah. Um, I actually wrote an article about it. Back in two thousand and six there was a spill in San Francisco Bay and UM our boss was like, hey, go write something on this right now.

I was like, okay, So I wrote it and um I was happy to see that pretty much nothing's changed since the then in four years, the technology hasn't advanced, and we're actually using some really primitive techniques. No kidding, but check. Let's let's first start by talking about how the Gulf um oil spill started in the first place, right the deep water horizon and oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah, this is claud Did they call this a spill? I guess they're calling a spill, aren't they. Yeah.

I think anytime it's introduced to yeah, water, it's a spill, because I generally even think it has to be water. I think oil gets out of whatever containment system is supposed to be holding it. It's a spill. So my old Plymouth Valiant that I had in Los Angeles all over my driveway, I'll bet I got charged for that by my renter or by my ails. Always oil spots. It's like ten bucks apiece. It's a wear and tear. That's what I said. You know something cool I just

thought of too. When you google earth my house, you could see my car, my driveway, my l a house, and the oil spill. Can you really that's crazy? Anyway, you can also google Earth the oil spill in the gulf right now as far as I know, Yeah, all those pictures that are coming out are just awful. Yeah.

We sent out UM you know, we have a Facebook page, stuff you should Know page, and we posted and tweeted on our Twitter account to UM a link to this PBS blog that had a live feed video of the oil under the Gulf of Mexico a mile down right. Was the most depressing thing I've ever seen. It's just shooting out plumes of oil and there's a really big discussion. Anyway,

the deepwater horizon exploded. The BP was capping a well to come back and drill later because I wanted to go start another drill or another well UM by March and they were running behind. From what I understand, it's starting to emerge that their May year have been something of a rush job and capping this well. Some UM gas built up in the in the well, it exploded in this pipe that went from the rig to the well.

Cap UH killed eleven people, and UM sunk the rig, burst the pipe in at least three places, and now we have these plumes that are plumes of oil that are being introduced into the Gulf of Mexico. At first they thought it was what a thousand barrels a day? Right, Well, yeah, thousand barrels a day. VPS numbers aren't quite lining up

with the numbers from the experts. No, and the government said, well, we're going to figure this ourselves, but we're going to use a an equation that is specifically recommended to not be used for calculating oil released underwater. Not recommended by oil oil companies, are not recommended by experts. So they came up with five thousand barrels a day. Some experts, like some people who know UM, have said it's probably

about four or five times that. So what we're talking about is as much as twenty five thousand barrels, and there's forty two gallons in a barrel, twenty five thousand barrels a day. If that's the case, then as of this podcast, recording the Gulf oil spill, the BP golf oil spill it's going on right now, has released the amount the Exxon Valds dropped eight times over w Yeah, well they just actually on seen in just released like

two hours ago. They they're officially calling it the worst oil spill in US history, in US history, But it's not the worst ever, is the Chuckers. No. I don't know if you have different info, but um nine Persian Gulf War, two hundred and forty million gallons off the coast of Saudi Arabia, Is that what you got? Yeah? And right now we've got about eighty eight million. If it's twenty five thousand barrels a day, we've read about eighty eight million. It's two hundred forty million barrels gallons,

forty million gallons. That's enormous. I don't think we'll ever top that. Yeah, And the Valdez was eleven million gallons. Yeah. And the second worst spill also took place in the Gulf of Mexico, but it was off the coast of Mexico, right right, And that one was I think like a hundred and forty million gallons something like that. I think so a hundred and forty million gallons. It was the Ish talk one talk I know x in in uh Mexican dialect as tech maybe is wach What are you

talking about? Something like that like wahaka. You're right, yeah, yeah, there's an accent there. So it's the talk one. Somebody will let us know, won't they. That took place from June of ninety February of ninety. It just kept going and that was a hundred and forty million gallons. Right, I got three more stats. If we're doing stats and people are taking shots, every one hundred every year, one hundred million US gallons of oil spill every year, yeah,

is what they say. There's there's stat number one. Um the United States uses seven hundred and ten million gallons of oil per day, and in fact, every twenty two minutes, Josh, the US uses up what was spilled in the Exxon Valdes spill every twenty two minutes. I know, isn't that weird? It's weird, it's disturbing, but that also accounts for why um oil spills are so massive. It's actually kind of

wondrous that more oil doesn't spill. Right. Apparently the um U s Coast Guard reported that after the Exxon Valdi's accident, there was a lot of like tightening and restrictions. It was just such a very public accident, and it happened in the US, so it mattered, you know. UM, So all of a sudden, there's all this these restrictions on UM tanker design, like you need to have double holes UM,

and then other regulations that that made restrictions tighter. And I think UM spillage dropped by like fifty eight percent between and two thousand four. Yeah. You know, Maddie Frederick of coolest stuff on the planet. Have you ever seen his Facebook stuff? No, he's just like you need a Facebook friendom. Personally, he's like the liberal crusader of all times. It's like four times a day he sends out. I

bet you didn't know this. He came by the other day and told me about a basically every country in the world that does off short drilling has this process in place that UM, when there's a situation like just happened, an implosion happens, is triggered immediately to implode and seal everything up at the source. And he said, the US is the only country that, huh, recently and like several years ago, said oh, we don't need this because it costs a lot of money. We're the only country that's great.

Pretty cool, Well, we're the only country with our minerals Management Service, which apparently had has had a pretty cozy relationship with energy companies, right, m yeah, if you think about that, though, Chuck, this oil spilling the Gulf, coupled with the mine explosion in West Virginia, like those two accidents coming that close together can actually completely change energy policy and it probably will be pretty interesting. Um. All right, So Chuck, let's say that you had just gotten your

hair cut. I did. In fact, all right, let's say you said, you know what, I want my hair to go to matter of trust, because it's going to be used, um to clean up this oil spill. Right. Remember, we got a bunch of emails about this, like you guys mentioned this's mentioned this that if you send your hair to the Gulf, like it will be used to clam the oil spill. Uh is that hair being used? Now? That was the initial idea, and hair can be used

in fact for smaller spill for smaller spills. But they say, uh, I read in the New York Times today they said that there is not deemed feasible after a technical evaluation. No. BP's like, hey, um, that's a really good idea. But we are actually going to use real sorbins, real stuff, right, um. And like you said, hair can be used, it is used on a much smaller scale. Um. But the people, I guess who have really kind of started this initiative, I think it's a matter of trust out of San Francisco.

They said, oh yeah, um, well you asked for it initially, so we're gonna send it to you and it's up to you to figure out what to do with it. And all the hair is being sent to BP and they're rolling it in a big hairball from San Francisco, like the size of a car. Um. So, chuck, why would you use hair or a better A better question is how would you use hair to clean up oil? Well, I guess hair would be a sorbent, right, I think so. So basically, a sorbent is something that acts as a

giant sponge two. I mean, it's so primitive sounding, but it literally just soaks up the oil from the water. And it can do this because oil uh sits about It forms a layer on top of water, especially saltwater, about a millimeter thick, isn't that right? Sometimes a little more. It depends, especially at first, Right, So it's thickest in the first couple hours, which is when you really want

to get to it. Uh, if you get to it initially, you can contain it by using these buoyant booms and they float on the water and there's a skirt that hangs down into the water and it basically keeps it from spreading. So that's that's what you want to Yeah, and then you come along with some skimmers that may use um centripetal, which is not centrifugal. Centripetal force is when you spin something and it's the force that pulls

you to the center. So because oil is is lighter than water, it will be pulled more easily, or the water will be pulled more easily one of the two. But it separates them. You can also just scrape it up and they also have a conveyor belt systems skimmers where like you just basically like it just pulls the oil up right off of the water. Yeah. You know what I didn't find in any of this is if they can because they soak up this oil and put it in a containment tanker. Can they use this oil? Yes?

Really you knew this, I did. I actually ran across it in research that there there. Yeah, they they when you soak it up and you use like say hair or some other kind of sorbent, and you can use natural stuff like um, uh, pine bark, yeah, banana fibers. Actually, I don't know if they still use that, but that

was one for a while. Right, So there's there are some naturally occurring materials that um will soak up oil more than it soaks up water, right, Um, But you can squeeze it out and there's your oil because really nothing's happened to it hasn't had the chance to mix with water yet, right. You just literally like they have a dude that's got an oily rag and you just squeeze it into a little containers as oil. So that's you.

That's your job. Um. You can also burn it, and actually this is the most efficient means of taking care of an oil slick. Yeah, because it sits on top. You can burn it away. But that's clearly not a very good thing to do because when you burn oil creates some pretty noxious fumes for the environment. It does. It's about umcent efficient though. Um. Again, you want to do it away. It's called institute burning. You want to do it when the slick is away from the shore.

The shore, yeah, from say coral colonies, that kind of stuff. If it's just out in the deep ocean then and it's it hasn't gotten to be a big problem to where it has traveled towards civilization, then you can just burn it, right. Yeah. The other weird thing I thought that you pointed out not weird, but I found it odd was sometimes if it's far enough out, they'll just leave it alone and oil eventually will evaporate because the sun and the waves and the weather, and they'll just say,

let the earth take care of it. Right. The wave action, I can't remember what it's called when sunlight breaks something a photodegradation maybe, um. But you remember when we did the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Yeah, we were talking about how like the wave action and the sun breaks down plastic even in the little globules. The same thing happens to um oil because plastic is petroleum based. Right. You can also hasten the breakdown by adding microbes to it, right, yeah,

the biological agents. Yeah, yeah, that's when UM like a fertile eyes or phosphorus and nitrogen. You'll spread it all over it and it will actually foster the growth of microorganisms and that will help break it down into fatty acids, right UM C O two I think right, yes, yes, UM.

You can actually uh foster the growth of these microbes by adding uh, what'd you say, phosphorus and nitrogen, right, And when you when you do add these things that there's a there's a danger of actually going out to the open ocean and creating an algae bloom, which creates a dead zone, which is not good. So you if you're going to use UM phosphorus and nitrogen to hasten the growth of UM microbes, you want to do it in like a marshal. And that's outside of the title movement. Yeah. Well,

there's also dispersions. You probably heard this on the news. A lot um with with a BP accident and UM in tropical areas, they handle they handle it with dispersons, and these are chemicals that break the oil down into UM basically breaks oil slick apart into little oil droplets which can be absorbed into the aquatic system quickly, right,

but this is not necessarily the best, now you know. Um, it turns out in two seven, uh, and Israeli study found that the combination of chemical dispersants and UM partially broken down oil is actually more harmful to a coral ecosystem than just crude oil itself. Yeah, and it actually didn't an e p A get on BP and say wait a minute, this disperson you're using, you can't use, go find another one, like now, probably I could see that. I think that happened. I think everybody's taking a shot

at BPS. Seriously, they're they're kind of gentle as a lamb right now. But chuck that that study, that Israeli study kind of reveals something that's easy to forget because it's so gross looking. But oil is natural, so naturally occurring substance. Right. One of the big problems with it is when it becomes broken down, Uh, it can be it enters the the food cycle, and this equals the seafood chain, right, which enters our food chain because we eat seafood, which is why the shrimpers are out of

business right now. Um, And it also becomes it can adhere to sand pebbles that kind of stuff and through wave action, turns into little tar balls. They're like they're they're solid on the outside, but they're like soft and gooey in the middle, and things like to eat them and choke on them and they sink. They said, though, I mean they said, you said, you're the one that wrote it. You said that they're not as dangerous sometimes

to the environment as a flat out oil problem. But it's still not great outously because they're broken up and they're separated rather than you know, this big, huge slick. But you know, if a fish is eating a tar ball and dies and it's not good. Same with like

a pelican or a bird. And then the other problem with an oil slick for wildlife is that it gets on it breaks down the water resistance of um mammal fur and birds, aquatic birds which ended up getting gooped up with this stuff, right, so theirs and seattas and pelicans and they get soaked or they poison themselves by trying to lick themselves clean. I can't look at those pictures. This picture, yeah, I notice I didn't print that out. I can't even I just can't even go there. Heartbreaking. Um.

There is also the beach clean up. Right, So we talked about marsh clean up. You can you can add nitrogen and phosphorus and bio remediate it, right. Um, but you also have beaches. You've got tar balls on beaches, you have pelicans walking around like why me? You know? Um? And you have to clean up this beach. And apparently on Prince William Sound that was the where the Valdess build in Alaska. Yes. Uh, they said, you know what,

we want to make the beach look clean again. So we're gonna use high pressure hoses like spray everything off. That doesn't really do anything. It pushes the oil down and actually screws things up worse, pushes it into the sand. Huh. Yeah, um, but the beach looks clean at least. Uh. And and they've been doing that. Um. They did that in Alaska and I don't know if they had plans to do it and Louisiana or not, but it's gonna be bad

either way. Uh. The other thing you pointed out, which I thought was interesting because I had this thought too that all this, just the clean up act itself, would probably be really bad for the wildlife. And you said that they use um sort of like scarecrows and dummies and um balloons to scare off animals that are near these boats that are trying to contain and clean up. Yeah, like get out of here. We're coming through to try and help. Yeah. And again another when you mentioned just

leaving it, that that that's a viable option, right. One of the reasons why is because within about twenty four to forty eight hours, most of the volatile organic compounds found in oil, the most toxic stuff, evaporates, So when you have an oil spill, it loses its most toxicity within two days, which is good, it is good. But the problem is with a spill like we have now, any oil that's losing its most toxic aspects are being replaced by new oil constantly. So we were it's a

big problem that's going on. I mean, you can just look at the underwater camera feed and tell it's a big problem, but you know, once you have a few more of the facts, it's really big problem. Yeah. I was, actually today is Thursday, May what and I was I've been clicking literally by the minute to see if this top kill the thing is where there're BP's latest effort to stop this five week old underwater geyser is working and initial reports. I mean, this will clearly be known

by Tuesday when this comes out. But they're saying, oh, we think it might be working. Um, even though our like shooting mud and cement down in there is sounds sort of weird, it might be working in our big uh big thing that we lowered down on top top. Yeah, that didn't work too good. And the idea to shoot golf balls into it didn't work too good. So um, they don't the junk shot they don't even say work

too well, were too good, working good? Yeah? The what the top shot, junk shot, top kill, junk shop, pat top hatop kill, junk shot, big mess. Yeah, that's what it is, buddy. Uh. If you want to know more about cleaning up oil spills, you can read my article um on it. Yes, there's also articles on offshore drilling and oil spills, not just clean up, so um we should probably cover those at some point too. So just

type in oil spill drilling offshore. There you go, and the handy search bar how stuff works dot com right right, And since I had said handy search bar, it's seems like that should trigger something. It would normally trigger listener mail Josh, what what what's going on? Well, this week we have a couple of thank you's quickly and then our New York announcements. Uh so everyone knows where to meet up in New York. Um quickly though. I want

to thank Steve Clayton dot com. They do custom guitar picks. Brian, there's a fan of the show. He wrote in and said, dude, you're in a band, your old man band cover band, El Cheap. Oh you should do you want some custom guitar picks? You can design it? And I was like, uh yeah, let me think about that for a second. Yes, So I designed my little El Cheap guitar pick and they're pretty cool. It's way cool. And he sent me

a huge bag of these things. And so I just wanted to say thank you to Steve Clayton dot com. And they're like big time. They do like the Food Fighters and Tenacious Dah and now El Chebo was on their roster. That's really sweet. Yes, pretty are you on the website? Is your design on the website? Because I saw it and it was very cool. No, it is

actually gonna be on the website at some point. So thanks to Brian, and thank you to Jacob Storm Deathridge who they do these cool journals made from old library books, so like they'll take the front and back cover an old library book and bind it with some of the first few pages and then the rest of it is blank journal style. And they sent us some of these that was really nice. And they're at www dot book journals dot com out of Portland, Oregon. Super creative. Yeah,

very cool. Thank you to both of those guys, right well, thanks to one for me. Thanks to two from Chuck yes yeah and Chuck right yeah yeah. New York City, look out, New York City. We're coming to New York June seven. We are having a happy hour at the Knitting Factory. Yeah. We'll be wearing nothing but chaps from five thirty to seven thirty. After that we're gonna put on our shirts and everything. And uh. We are having a trivia night, a bar trivia night at the Bell

House in Brooklyn on Wednesday, June night. Doors open at six thirty coming rob Elbos. Trivia goes from seven to nine. You can challenge the all star team consisting of me and Josh Joe Randazzo, editor of The Onion newspaper and two or three unannounced mystery celebrity guests that will be on our team, unannounced and uncommitted. So the ideas you

come and you challenge us. If you think you're smart, you get a trivia team together for Wednesday night, and we will smack you down in the name of smarts and how stuff works and our egos. Yes, so there's all that, um, and then the the co ED plug.

Oh yeah, go ahead and hit that one. Uh well, as you may have heard if you listen to the Guatemala podcast Part Uno and part does UM, we are raising some money, as we do from time to time for noble causes like co ED Cooperative for Education, which provides textbooks and and UH computer centers in a very sustainable manner to UH schools in need in Guatemala, which you could just say schools in Guatemala UM. And you

can donate five bucks by typing stuff. When you send a text to two zero to to two, you're gonna get a text back asking you if you're sure. You text back yes, and you just donated five bucks to co IT. If you want to learn more about co ED or you live outside of the United States, you can go onto their website at www dot co ed. You see that's c O E d U see dot org. If you live outside of the U S you can

donate there. If you live inside the US, but you need a little more um uh incentive, go look at their website and see the work they do, and I'll bet you still donate the five bucks afterwards. And uh if you want to send us an email, shoot it to stuff Podcasts at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the how stuff works dot com

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