Talk:Environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 1 September 2020 and 20 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Chloezampetti, AlgalBloom34. Peer reviewers: Shancully, Madison.platow.

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Comment cut and pasted from tail of article

Posted by an IP here

--cut and paste starts--

Much of what has been written above is speculative with phrased like "May" or "may have". The problems is that much of the research so far is unco-ordinated and has not been independently verified. Furthermore contrary research carried out by scientists on behalf of BP is embargoed due to the outcome of legal cases and the NRDA process.

Therefore it is too soon for a seemingly definitive article such as this to be published as it may give a wholly or partially incorrect impression of the situation

--cut and paste ends--

Rich Farmbrough, 18:27, 8 January 2013 (UTC).

Refs.

A lot of the refs don't appear to be very good going by the three I've examined. One is simply a footnote, one is a claim about a lawsuit that appears to have no further reference on the website of the suing party. This one is an opinion piece. Rich Farmbrough, 18:27, 8 January 2013 (UTC).

Based on the above I have removed the threatened endangered species section, as far too poorly sourced. Should there be independent commentary, form Woods Hole, for example, then by all means reintroduce it. Rich Farmbrough, 18:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC).

What did you remove? Can you leave a diff or the removed text here? petrarchan47tc 03:22, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

This is the diff. Rich Farmbrough, 14:42, 9 January 2013 (UTC).

The source was Defenders of Wildlife. We quote Greenpeace in many articles. Let's leave it in until we can find more independent sources, unless you seriously doubt the content? petrarchan47tc 06:33, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

This comes from a merge that editors agreed to, there is no reason to remove it as there is no space problem. Maybe just put a tag for better citation. petrarchan47tc 08:04, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Lead

Can we change "largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry." to "largest accidental marine oil spill." (I'm presuming the deliberate Kuwait spills are larger.) Rich Farmbrough, 18:53, 8 January 2013 (UTC).

 Done. Rich Farmbrough, 14:43, 9 January 2013 (UTC).

National Wildlife Refuges at risk

I looked at both the refs. While there is a list, I see nothing saying what the status of these refuges was. If they were "at risk" is this significant? Should we perhaps say "47 wildlife refuges were listed as 'at risk'" and the following XX were eventually directly affected by the spill? Rich Farmbrough, 18:57, 8 January 2013 (UTC).

Certainly, when we have the science. petrarchan47tc 08:25, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Food

Should food safety belong here? Possibly useful ref.

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279436/ doi:10.1289/ehp.1103695

Rich Farmbrough, 01:43, 9 January 2013 (UTC).

Secondary sources are good to add, especially when citing government studies. (In the case of this spill, the US govt was shown to be covering up for BP and squelching science):

FDA Allowed Unsafe Seafood Onto Market After BP Oil Spill Disaster

Study: Gulf Seafood Unsafe for Pregnant Women and Children? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3279457/

Scientist Questions Safety of Gulf Seafood: "[Subra] is concerned about cancer-causing chemicals called Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons, or PAH's. And after the oil spill, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raised the allowable amounts of those chemicals in the seafood they test. And FDA established these levels specifically for the spill and in some cases they are ten times higher than the levels that were already on the books," said Subra." petrarchan47tc 08:24, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure that these articles add a lot, they are effectively media pieces based on a press release about the blog of one of the researchers (and the paper and the petition), although they do provide a little balance. Note that the first article quotes Wikipedia without attribution. The back-and-forth continues in the media here for example. Would be good to have the FDA's offical response if there is one.

I can't see any claims that the FDA were covering up for BP. Rich Farmbrough, 21:18, 10 January 2013 (UTC).

FDA's official response Rich Farmbrough, 22:40, 10 January 2013 (UTC).

Generic FDA media responses

• Interview with AP
• In house interview

Rich Farmbrough, 21:27, 10 January 2013 (UTC).

FDA's standards for Gulf seafood may be lower than those in past oil spills petrarchan47tc 06:31, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

This isn't based on someone's blog. I'm not sure what you're talking about. TIME Study: Gulf Seafood Unsafe for Pregnant Women and Children?

Review of following 2 studies

Seafood Contamination after the BP Gulf Oil Spill and Risks to Vulnerable Populations: A Critique of the FDA Risk Assessment

FDA Risk Assessment of Seafood Contamination after the BP Oil Spill: Rotkin-Ellman and Solomon Respond petrarchan47tc 06:37, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Useful information

http://www.doi.gov/deepwaterhorizon/upload/Final-DOI-2nd-Interim-Partial-Claim-for-2013-October-4-2012.pdf

Here the DOI is, among other things, requesting funds for a survey "Baseline Mortality in Breeding Bird Colonies" which will be completed in summer 2013, on the basis that the colonies will be back to normal by then. This will enable the DOI to calculate the excess mortality in 2010 due to the spill, and hence plan the actual remedial work. I think that qualifies for a Facepalm. (They are asking for $58m for these projects.)

However there is good stuff in here about Kemp's ridley turtles, loggerhead turtles, great egrets and most importantly I think submerged oil mats.

Rich Farmbrough, 21:45, 9 January 2013 (UTC).

Research index at NOAA + others

http://www.lib.noaa.gov/researchtools/subjectguides/dwh.html

Something for the "mutations" section - genomic expression. http://www.esl.lsu.edu/research/publications/abs/Whitehead_PNAS_2011.abs

Rich Farmbrough, 19:50, 10 January 2013 (UTC).

Is this article being scrubbed?

Why was this change made today?

After this edit (summary: Remaining oil: "Nature is a better RS than CBS for this")

At the 2013 "Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science Conference", oceanographer David Hollander presented data that showed as much as one-third of the oil released during the spill may still be in the gulf. Researchers described a phenomenon called "dirty blizzard": oil caused deep ocean sediments to clumped together, falling to the ocean floor at ten times the normal rate in an "underwater rain of oily particles". The result could have long-term effects on both humans and marine life. Commercially-fished species feed on sediment creatures, meaning oil could remain in the food chain for generations. CBS

Became

At the 2013 "Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science Conference", oceanographer David Hollander presented data that showed as much as 30% of the oil released during the spill may be precipitated into the sediments on the floor of the gulf. Evidence from Rebekka Larson, a sedimentary geologist at Eckerd College showed that the rate of precipitation of plankton and other material at many sites was ten times normal. Uta Passow, biological oceanographer from the University of California, Santa Barbara, has demonstrated in the lab that weathered Deepwater Horizon oil causes clumping unlike fresh oils. Concern was expressed for commercially fished species such as tilefish which burrow in the sediment and feed on sediment dwelling creatures. NATURE

Nature might be "better", but if the effort is to build an encyclopedia, the article would have include both. petrarchan47tc 02:02, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

The CBS article is based on the Nature article. The CBS article combines items from the nature article giving a misleading impression of the state of the science, as well as missing the important facts that

1. weathered oil is implicated in "clumping"
2. Tilefish themselves burrow in the sediment

The Nature article says "might even affect commercial fisheries in the future" the jump to "could stay in the food chain for generations" is too great, being insufficiently specific about the consequences ("commercial fisheries" are more specific, and arguably more important than "the food chain") and too specific about the time-scale ("the future" is very vague whereas "for generations" implies at least 40 years). I thought it also useful to mention the specific species (tilefish).

Even so there is more in the Nature article I would have liked to included, but I would really like to find the proceedings, because even the Nature article is poorly worded, leaving one unsure of what the research reported on actually showed. Rich Farmbrough, 05:35, 24 March 2013 (UTC).

CBS is a perfectly fine source, and the wording was much more clear. I've added your tilefish detail. It sounds like you have doubts that the oil will have lasting effects. What is this belief based on, and do you think you might be verging on WP:OR? petrarchan47tc 16:15, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

CBS was misleading. We need RS to say that the oil will have lasting effects. The recent information from other large spills does indeed indicate that there are (relatively) long term effects, but these need to be synthesised by RS, not by us, and preferably independent scientific sources. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:20, 1 June 2014 (UTC).

Is there a reason the 1200 sq mile "bathtub ring" "bigger than Rhode Island" mentioned on http://bigstory.ap.org/article/2d91393eee1e497e8ee677ff8b596c58/bp-spill-left-big-oily-bathtub-ring-seafloor is not mentioned in this wikipedia article? I don't find this information widely distributed and wonder if it's been discredited. 99.133.161.229 (talk) 04:26, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

One small suggestion

Hello, my name is Arturo and I am an employee of BP. As part of my work for the company I have been involved in talk page discussion on article's related to BP since last year. My aim is to improve the accuracy and quality of BP article's on Wikipedia. Though I have been actively in discussion on the BP talk page, this is my first time posting here.

I was recently reading through this article and noticed something minor I would like to suggest be fixed. The following sentence appears word-for-word in both the Timeline and Dolphins sections. I would suggest that it be removed from the Timeline section.

The joint study by NOAA and BP found "many of the 32 dolphins studied were underweight, anemic and suffering from lung and liver disease, while nearly half had low levels of a hormone that helps the mammals deal with stress as well as regulating their metabolism and immune systems".

I appreciate you reviewing this. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks. Arturo at BP (talk) 14:53, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I removed the second of these sentences, as the first one seemed to fit better where it was. Kind regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 20:50, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for making this edit. I saw the tag on the article about duplicated information, so if I notice any more I will leave another request here. Arturo at BP (talk) 21:06, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Cardiotoxicity of PAHs

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons already have their own article, with a section on their toxicology. I think that that would be a better place to put the recent Science content on the mechanisms of their toxicity, which is not directly relevant to this subject. The specifics of precisely how PAHs kill fish isn't important. If you're doing an article about somebody that died from poisoning, there's really no need to include the latest breakthroughs in biology on how that particular poison works. Geogene (talk) 16:47, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

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Correcting timeline

Hello, I noticed two recent edits by an IP added incorrect information when the editor changed the date at the beginning of Timeline. Per the source used, the correct date should be October 22, 2010, as you can see in this version of the article. Can someone fix this inaccuracy? I am an employee of BP and do not edit articles directly. Thanks. Arturo at BP (talk) 15:37, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

 Done Since the two edits made by the IP were obvious vandalism, it probably would have been acceptable for you to revert them. —  crh ₂₃  (Talk) 08:35, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you crh23 for making this edit. Even when there is a very straightforward case I prefer not to edit articles directly because of my COI. Arturo at BP (talk) 17:52, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

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