Topic: Is Using Dispersants on the BP Gulf Oil Spill Fighting Pollution with Pollution?

[sam]

Roughly five million liters of dispersants have now been used to break up the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, making this the largest use of such chemicals in U.S. history. If it continues for 10 months, as long as Mexico's Ixtoc 1 blowout in 1979 in the same region, the Macondo well disaster has a good chance of achieving the largest global use of these chemicals, surpassing 10 million liters.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-using-dispersants-fighting-pollution-with-pollution

[Rik]

I've often wondered if we do more harm than good in trying to 'help' nature in this way.

[sam]

well we def do more harm by suppressing forest fires.