Chemical soup

Hurricane Isaac just off the coast of Louisiana August 28, 2012

Whatever became of all this?  I'm sure it's been magic-microbed away by now.

In the wake of Hurricane Isaac last August, at least 341,000 gallons of oil, chemicals and untreated waste-water were released by area oil, coal, gas and petrochemical facilities, according to a report released Tuesday (August 6).

The report by the Gulf Monitoring Consortium, which examined National Response Center and Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality data, stated that facilities also released about 192 tons of gasses and other materials – or about 355,000 pounds. The report also notes that oil from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon continued to wash ashore as a result of the hurricane.

Update: Also, in a related matter, there's this.

An analysis of water, sediment and seafood samples taken in 2010 during and after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has found higher contamination levels in some cases than previous studies by federal agencies did, casting doubt on some of the earlier sampling methods.

The lead author, Paul W. Sammarco of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, said that dispersants used to break up the oil might have affected some of the samples. He said that the greater contamination called into question the timing of decisions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to reopen gulf fisheries after the spill and that “it might be time to review the techniques that are used to determine” such reopenings.