The following was posted today in the LinkedIn GreenUSA discussion board:
I have nothing to do with this and do not benefit from any of this. I wanted to see for myself what I’m not hearing in the news. I know that it easy to obtain a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for any chemical describing the expected hazards of any product.
Here are some websites to review from Nalco, the company making Corexit(r):
This shows a number of press releases since the spill: http://www.nalco.com/applications/corexit-technology.htm
Yesterday (5/24) EPA Admin Lisa Jackson released this statement about dispersant use in the spill: See this page on EPA’s site for a more general listing of releases.
It seems as though they are now agreeing that using this product is the best available method to get rid of the spilled oil. None of this takes away from the bigger issue that the flow needs to stop.
As someone with an engineering background and supportive of industry, I am very disheartened by this accident. How could the platform and systems be designed to allow this to happen? Those of us in the industry talk about designing equipment to “fail-safe”, preventing injuries and disasters like this. I know nothing about this particular incident, but I’d bet that the investigation will find that there were insufficient protections, an insufficient hazards analysis, and insufficient training all contributing to this accident. I would like to hear what The Responsible Care organization says about all of this.
Unfortunately, I think if the industry cannot protect itself, it must be more highly regulated. We cannot allow safety and the environment to be compromised by accidents like this. They must be prevented.
Tom Smith
tom@fsgnj.com
