Oil spill Exxon Valdez

In any industrial facility, from offices to factories and laboratories, spills happen and create a variety of risks to workers. Inside a plant, spills result in chemicals on the floor, in the air, or on the workers themselves. When releases occur outside the plant (e.g., chemical releases from tank cars or trucks, the spread of noxious fumes from an internal spill), the potential for harm extends far beyond the facility, particularly with major catastrophes such as the Bhopal chemical release, the Exxon Valdez oil spill. New York s Love Canal, and dioxin-contaminated Times Beach in Missouri, have led several federal departments and agencies to enact protective regulations. These protections are aimed at protecting a much broader range of people, property, and the environment than most regulations administered by OSHA. 

Lessons Learned from the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Field, Fall, Nighswander, Peacock, Varanasi, editors 1999... 

Shigenaka, G. and Henry, C.B. Jr. 1995, Use of Mussels and Semipermeable Membrane Devices To Assess Bioavailability of Residual Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons Three Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. In Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Fate and Effects in Alaskan Waters Wells, P.G., Butler, J.N., Hughes, J.S, Eds. American Society for Testing and Materials Philadelphia, PA. pp. 239-260. 

Description Petroleum resulting from oil spills often pollutes water bodies. Large-scale accidents are also an important cause of pollution along shore lines. The most well-known example is the Exxon Valdez oil spill. 

Table 4.7. Effectiveness of the bioremediation treatment of cobblestone beaches following the Exxon Valdez oil spill...

Button, D. K., Robertson, B. R., McIntosh, D. Juttner, F. (1992). Interactions between marine bacteria and dissolved-phase and beached hydrocarbons after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 58, 243-51. 

Lindstrom, J. E., Prince, R. C., Clark, J.C., Grossman, M.J., Yeager, T. R., Brown, J. F. Brown, E. J. (1991). Microbial populations and hydrocarbon biodegradation potential in fertilized shoreline sediments affected by the t/v Exxon Valdez oil spill. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 57, 2514-22. 

Pritchard, P. H., Mueller, J. G., Rogers, J. C., Kremer, F. V. Glaser, J. A. (1992). Oil spill bioremediation experiences, lessons and results from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. Biodegradation, 3, 315-35. 

Long-term exposure of microbial populations to certain toxicants often is necessary for adaptation of enzymatic systems capable of degrading those toxicants. This was the case with the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska in 1989. Natural microbial populations in Prince William Sound, Alaska, had developed enzyme systems that oxidize petroleum hydrocarbons because of long-term exposure to natural oil seeps and to hydrocarbons that leached from the pine forests in the area. Growth of these natural microbial populations was nutrient limited during the summer. Thus the application of nutrient formulations to the rocky beaches of Prince William Sound stimulated microbial growth and helped to degrade the spilled oil. 

Maki, A.W. (1991) The Exxon Valdez oil spill initial environmental impact assessment. Environ. Sci. Technol., 25, 24. 

Boehm, P.D., Douglas, G.S., Burns, W.A., Mankiewicz, P.J., Page, D.S., Bence, A.E., 1997. Advances in petroleum hydrocarbon chemical fingerprinting and allocation techniques after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Mar. Pollut. Bull. 34, 599-613. 

Birkland, T.A. and Lawrence, R.G. (2002) The social and political meaning of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Spill Science and Technology Bulletin 7(5) 17-22. 

Impact Assessments. (1990). Economic, social, and psychological impact assessment of the Exxon Valdez oil spill Final report prepared by Michael A. Downs for the Oiled Mayors Subcommittee, Alaska Conference of Mayors. La Jolla, CA. 

Monson, D., Doak, D., Ballachey, B., Johnson, A., Bodkin, J. (2002). Long-term impacts of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on sea otters, assessed through age dependent mortality patterns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 97(12), 6562-6567. 

Palinkas, L., Petterson, J., Russell, J., Downs, M. (1993). Community patterns of psychiatric disorders after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. American Journal of Psychiatry, 150, 10. 

Sugai S. F., Lindstrom J. E., and Braddock J. F. (1997) Environmental influences on the microbial degradation of Exxon Valdez oil spill on the shorelines of Prince William Sound, Alaska. Environ. Set Technol. 31, 1564-1572. 

Keeble, J. Out of the Channel The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in Prince William Sound. Eastern Washington University Press, 1999. 

The OPA was passed in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in the Prince William Sound in Alaska. It created a tax on oil to cover the cost of responding to major spills when the responsible party is unwilling or unable to do so. The limits on liability for causing oil spills are clearly laid out in the law, and oil shippers and storage facilities are required to submit plans for responding to a large spill to the EPA. 

Worldwide, the introduction of a wide variety of anthropogenic chemicals into waters and soils has caused a growing concern about the consequences of such practices. Public awareness concerning the vulnerability of the environment to pollution has only been heightened by major incidents such as the Union Carbide (DOW) Bhopal and the Seveso disasters, the Three Mile Island and the Chernobyl accidents, and the Amoco Cadiz and the Exxon Valdez oil spills. 

Peterson CH, Rice SD, Short JW, et al. (2003) Long-term ecosystem response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Science 302 2082-2086. 

Wells PC, Butler JN, and Hughes JS (eds.) (1995) Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Fate and Effects in Alaskan Waters. Philadelphia, PA American Society for Testing and Materials. 

Other species have been used as environmental sentinels. The frequency of chromosomal aberrations in the gill tissue of Mytilus edulis transplanted to field sites contaminated to different extents increased with increasing exposure to contaminants (Al-Sabti and Kurelec, 1985). Pavlica et al. (2001) measured a significant increase of the tail length of comets in haemocytes of zebra mussels (.Dreissena polymorpha) after experimental exposure to polychlorophenol. Reichert et al. (1999) showed aromatic DNA adducts in the liver of Phoca vitulina richardsi (harbour seals) exposed to petroleum after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. 

Collier, T.K., C.A. Krone, M.M. Krahn, J.E. Stein, S.-L. Chan and U. Varanasi. Petroleum exposure and associated biochemical effects in subtidal fish after the EXXON Valdez oil spill. Atm. Fish. Soc. Symp. 18 671-683, 1996. 

Krahn, M.M., D.G. Burrows, G.M. Ylitalo, D.W. Brown, C.A. Wigren, T.K. Collier, S.L. Chan and U. Varanasi. Mass-spectrometric analysis for aromatic compounds in bile of fish sampled after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Environ. Sci. Technol. 26 116—126, 1992. 

Such natural services may be interrupted in other ways. If the chemical or sewage plant upstream puts something toxic into the stream that the water treatment plant of the city downstream cannot remove by standard treatments, a new water supply or a new treatment method will have to be found at increased cost. In earlier years before the toxicity of the polychlorinated biphenyls was fully appreciated, General Electric released enough of them into the Hudson River north of Albany, New York that the whole Hudson River from Hudson Falls to New York City is now a Superfund site.7 Fishermen are advised not to eat the fish that they catch. It is not always easy to calculate the cost of a fishery lost to toxic heavy metal ions or acids draining out of a mine site.8 One settlement, involving a salmon fishery in a river in Idaho, was for 60 million dollars. The Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska cost Exxon 3 billion dollars. The persons whose wells become contaminated by leachate from the nearby landfill will face the costs of bringing water from a distance. This was a cost that was not included when the landfill was built. The U. S. National Research Council has recommended that the U. S. Department of Commerce resume development of a method to better measure environmental costs.9... 

Palinkas LA, Petterson JS, Russell J, et al Community patterns of psychiatric disorders after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Am J Psychiatry 150 1517-1523, 1993 Robins LN, Fischbach RL, Smith EM, et al Impact of disaster on previously assessed mental health, in Disaster Stress Studies New Methods and Findings. Edited by Shore JH. Washington, DC, American Psychiatric Press, 1986, pp 21-48 Sethi BB, Sharma M, Trivedi JK, et al Psychiatric morbidity in patients attending clinics in gas affected areas in Bhopal. Indian J Med Res 86 (suppl) 45-50, 1987 Smith EM, Robins LN, Przybeck TR, et al Psychosocial consequences of a disaster, in Disaster Stress Studies New Methods and Findings. Edited by Shore JH. Washington, DC, American Psychiatric Press, 1986, pp 49-76 Soloman SD, Canino GJ Appropriateness of DSM-III-R criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder. Compr Psychiatry 31 227-237, 1990... 

Bence AE, Kvenvolden KA, Kennicutt MC (1996) Organic geochemistry applied to environmental assessments of Prince William Sound, Alaska, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill-a review. Org Geochem 24, 7-42. 

Short and Heintz have developed a first-order loss-rate (FOLR) kinetic model of PAH weathering based on molecular size to evaluate environmental samples collected for the Exxon Valdez oil spill for the presence of spilled oil. They found that the predictability of the model is sufficiently robust that the initial PAH composition of oil can be inferred from analysis of a... 

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