When it comes to allaying junk science chemical fears, ACSH does it best. On August 2, we defended the EPA’s decision to use the surface oil dispersant Corexit in the Gulf of Mexico in order to ameliorate the adverse effects of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, despite outrage from various environmental activist groups. And now we’re happy to report that out of 1,735 tissue samples from Gulf seafood analyzed by federal scientists, only 13 exhibited trace amounts of the dispersant residue.
FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg said Friday, “The overwhelming majority of the seafood tested shows no detectable residue; and not one of the samples shows a residue level that would be harmful for humans. There is no question gulf seafood coming to market is safe from oil or dispersant residue.”
This information, however, hasn’t stopped Gina Solomon, a senior scientist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, from continuing to spread needless alarm over the so-called visible levels of oil still present.
“At the time the dispersant was applied to the surface oil, there was a lot of controversy over it, and some environmental groups were trying to convince the EPA to not use it because they didn’t know enough about the potential environmental harm caused by this substance,” says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross. “But in the presence of such an environmental catastrophe, using this dispersant was obviously called for, and now plenty of data show that it was the right decision to make.”