When British Petroleum called all hands on deck to clean up its massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Naperville-based Nalco Co. responded by immediately shipping more than 10,000 gallons of an oil dispersant called Corexit and ramping up production to never-before-seen levels.
“It’s people working extra hours, working with our raw-materials suppliers in order to get the ingredients. The raw materials are used in other products, so we’re competing for those materials,” said Charlie Pajor, a spokesman for Nalco.
But the move has placed the nation’s chemical policies, and Nalco, in an uncomfortable spotlight.
Little is known about the chemical’s long-term effects on humans and sea life because testing is not required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Concerns about the potential environmental and health risks of the product have led the EPA to ask BP to consider other available options.
Up to one-third of Corexit’s chemical formula is proprietary, a concern for environmental advocates who say it is difficult to know the potential impact of a chemical with unknown ingredients, particularly at such high volumes.
Nalco said Tuesday that it has revealed the chemical makeup of Corexit 9500, which is used to break up and disperse oil in much the same way as dish detergent works to break up grease, to both the EPA and BP, and has also shared information about the chemical’s biodegradation and potential accumulation in sea life. If another option exists, Nalco said, it welcomes the alternative.
As of last week the company generated $40 million in revenue from dispersant requests from the Gulf, or about 1 percent of the company’s expected 2010 revenue. In a normal year, dispersant sales amount to a few million dollars, Nalco said.
“This is a product that we hope we never have to sell,” Pajor said.
The EPA has credited the dispersant for significantly aiding cleanup efforts. But environmental scientists say more information should be known about a chemical that is being applied in an amount EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson said Monday is “approaching a world record.” So far, 830,000 gallons of the chemical have been applied to the spill.
“We are still deeply concerned about the things we don’t know,” Jackson said. “The long-term effects on aquatic life are still unknown, and we must make sure that the dispersants that are used are as nontoxic as possible.”
Corexit 9500’s safety data sheet discloses that the substance can cause chemical pneumonia if aspirated into lungs. People applying it wear gloves and an air mask or safety goggles. An earlier version, Corexit 9527, which is being used in smaller amounts in the Gulf, contains 2-butoxyethanol and can cause “adverse health affects,” according to Nalco.
The latest Corexit, the company said, is safe and effective.
“If there is a better dispersant for use in the Gulf, we would welcome its use in mitigating this environmental disaster,” Nalco said Monday.
The EPA provides toxicity and effectiveness information about all approved oil-spill dispersants, but the information is limited and does not take into account the product’s environmental impact, accumulation potential or long-term effects. While Corexit is not the safest or the most effective of listed dispersants, according to the EPA’s Web site, BP has said it was the most readily available.
Environmental advocates say the fact that so little is known about the chemical’s long-term effects points to holes in the main law that regulates industrial chemicals.
Little health and safety information is required for chemicals listed on the EPA’s toxic chemicals inventory, and for about two-thirds of those chemicals even the name of the chemical is considered proprietary, said David Andrews, senior scientist for the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.
“I see it as somewhat indicative of our chemical policy in general. This just happens to be an example that’s front and center at the moment,” he said. “A lot of this comes down to the lack of fore-planning and the realization that at some point there was going to be a bigger oil spill, and these would be used in higher volumes.”.
In 2009, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office criticized the EPA for failing to adequately assess risks posed by thousands of toxic chemicals. The agency is generally required to prove chemicals are harmful before it can take regulatory action. In Europe, by contrast, the burden is on manufacturers to prove the safety of their products. As a result, many chemicals commonly used in America are banned in European countries.
According to Nalco, as part of the registration of Corexit 9500 for use in French water, the product’s biodegradation was required to be measured by an independent laboratory, a test that is not required by the EPA. Corexit passed the test in France, Nalco said, with 78 percent of the product biodegrading over 28 days.
The Gulf region provides about a billion pounds of seafood a year, mostly from near shore, so there is concern about accumulation of the chemical as it moves up the food chain.
“Bioaccumulation is a big concern with a lot of chemicals because that is the kind of mechanism by which mercury and PCBs accumulate in specimen,” Andrews said.
Nalco said several of Corexit’s ingredients are commonly found in food, cosmetics and household products and have been extensively studied for their potential to accumulate in the fatty tissues of fish. Nalco said EPA software found none of the components posed a risk for bioaccumulation.
The EPA said in a statement Tuesday that it is doing its own biodegradation modeling and estimates of bioaccumulation and has not received any information from Nalco about the long-term effects of the chemical on humans.
Scientists said other impacts aren’t being considered.
“I was blown away, surprised, that a material that could be used at this kind of scale, a Gulf of Mexico response plan, would approve the use of a material that you fundamentally can’t know everything about,” said Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund in North Carolina.
Rader said the sea surface, where most of the material is being applied, contains sea life at its earliest and most sensitive stage. Dispersing the oil, he said, could spread the impact into other ecosystems. The oil-chemical mix binding to particulate matter and sinking like snow, called “marine snow” by scientists, can affect bottom dwellers.
“I think there’s a huge question about whether or not it even makes sense to be using dispersants at this scale, particularly on the bottom,” he said.
