Oil Dispersants and Human Health Effects

The explosion and subsequent blowout of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) offshore drilling rig on April 20, 2010, led to the largest accidental offshore oil spill since the advent of the petroleum industry, dwarfed only by the deliberate release of crude oil by Iraqi forces during the Persian Gulf War. Over the time until the well was capped on July 15, approximately 200 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from the ocean floor beneath the well site located approximately 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. For perspective, this amount is nearly 20 times the amount of oil discharged during the Exxon Valdez incident in Alaska. As a result, massive mitigation efforts took place during and after the flow of oil which entailed mechanical recovery, controlled burning, and chemical dispersion. As a result unprecedented application of oil dispersant agents was employed by BP during this time until their use was curtailed by the EPA on May 26, 2010. Overall, about 17 - 20% of the crude oil was mechanically recovered and 6 – 8% burned. For the oil remaining in the environment, about 40% (of original input) was evaporated, dissolved, or dispersed into small droplets by natural processes. Initially, it was estimated that only 16.5 million gallons of oil

Implications of the Precautionary Principle for Environmental Regulation in the United States: Examples from the Control of Hazardous Air Pollutants in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments

Goldstein and Carruth argue that the hazardous air pollutant provisions of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments provide an example of the Precautionary Principle incorporated into US environmental legislation. Evaluating the outcome thus far leads them to the conclusion that utilizing the Precautionary Principle as a basis for legislation can be problematic to public-health goals

Crosslinking and gelation between linear polymers: DNA-antibody complexes in systemic lupus erythematosus

In the autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus the DNA molecules of an individual are attacked by its own antibodies. As these antibodies are bivalent they can crosslink different DNA molecules which can lead to the formation of DNA-antibody complexes and gels. Statistical properties of these complexes are derived and evaluated analytically in the limit of very long DNA molecules, as well as the concentrations at which a gel is being formed. The authors also present various numerical results for DNA molecules of intermediate lengths. This work can also be considered as a theory of the crosslinking and gelation of linear polymer