What The Heck Is Bioremediation?
With so many people demanding the government to ban Corexit, you may have also heard about the alternative solution proposed by so many environmental scientists: Bioremediation. It’s an interesting word and it sounds like such an evironmentally friendly solution, but lots of people are asking what the heck it is. Here’s our stab at answering your questions. First things first. To hear certain groups tell it, the oil has to be dispersed in order to be manageable, and still others say that the oceans can absorb it. We’ve dedicated other posts to describing why the water and marine life cannot, in fact, “absorb” the Corexit. But here’s something you might not realize: “It is important to remember that oil is a biological product and can be degraded by microbes, both on and beneath the surface of the water,” Hazen says. “Some of the detergents that are typically used to clean-up spill sites are more toxic than the oil itself, in which case it would be better to leave the site alone and all
