|
OIL SPILLS |
| by J. Burger, Rutgers University Press (1997) |
Technology has far too many advantages to enumerate, but one overwhelming disadvantage is the potential for industrial and chemical accidents. Oil spills are among the most ruinous -- and are getting worse and worse as supertankers increase in size, and as world transport routes increase in complexity. To supertanker, transfer, well, and pipeline accidents has been added the horror of intentional bombing of tankers and the setting afire of hundreds of oil wells in the wake of military retreat, as happened during the Gulf War.
Oil spills, however, differ dramatically from many other types of industrial accidents, such as chemical spills, Bhopal, Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl. Except for the crews aboard ships who are almost always rescued, there are few human fatalities. Our fear of oil spill accidents is much less, but the potential for damage to the environment, however, is very great.
Most books on oil spills either focus on one gigantic spill that captured our attention, such as the Exxon Valdez, or deal with particular aspects of spill clean-up, tanker safety, or the difficulties of arctic or offshore drilling activities. Others are very technical, providing comprehensive details on supertanker construction, shipping lanes, or oil refineries.
In this book I examine oil spills, from the history of oil and its uses, to the immediate events surrounding an oil spill, biological effects, and finally to the effects on people, including the health risks, as well as the social, economic, and aesthetic impacts. In general I focus on marine and other aquatic spills because these are both more numerous, and we know more about them. I will take you on a journey through a number of oil spills, often from the perspective of the scientists and others who lived through them. Until I saw an oil spill slowly seep through an estuarine system I studied and loved, I could not have predicted the devastation it creates. In its wake, it leaves not only the oiled birds and struggling seals we see on television, but hundreds and thousands of dead mussels and barnacles, crabs and fish, and a sense of profound loss and frustration on the part of local residents, who stare in disbelief at their fouled beaches.
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