Oil dispersant effects remain murky As oil continues to churn
from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, many questions remain
about where the oil will go and how it will affect marine life.
Making those questions even tougher to answer are the
controversial chemical dispersants that BP has used to break the
oil into smaller droplets and keep it away from shorelines and
the surface. Although a panel of 50 experts on 27 May came out
in support of continued use of dispersants given the tradeoffs
at the time, the long-term effects of dispersant use remain
uncertain. "We don't know whether it's affecting wildlife or
not," says Ed Overton of Louisiana State University. "We're
right in the middle of this. We really won't know for a while
yet." "It was the consensus that the use of dispersants was, at
that point, environmentally beneficial in the big picture," says
panel member Carys Mitchelmore, of the University of Maryland
Center for Environmental Science. "What concerns me are just the
huge uncertainties and data ga