Exploding Water? Gulf Water Sample Tested For Oil Explodes In Lab

VIDEO

by Steven Jessop | 1:27 pm, July 20th, 2010

» 4 comments

The Alabama Gulf Coast is known for many things, like Civil War era fortresses and alcohol-soaked spring breaks. But now, the southern strip of white sand beaches has another, less flattering trademark attraction thanks to the BP oil disaster: exploding water.

WKRG News in Mobile, Ala. recently ran an investigative report to see just how much oil and petroleum is in the water and sand along the Gulf shore of the state. Anchor Jessica Taloney took samples from popular tourist destinations like Orange Beach, Katrina Key, Gulf Shores, and Dauphin Island, then handed them over to chemist Bob Newman for testing. According to Newman, sand and water along the Gulf Coast should not contain any traces of oil or petroleum, but given the circumstances, still no more than five parts per million of the substance.

The results are unsurprisingly well over this estimate – the lowest quantity of oil and petroleum found was 16 parts per million in water from Katrina Key, the highest being 221 parts per million in a sample taken from a pool of water in Orange Beach where a child was playing.

What is surprising, however, is what happened to a water sample from Dauphin Island Marina when Newman tried to test it for oil. Upon adding the same organic solvent used in the previous tests to the sample (which was gathered near an oil containment boom) the water exploded within seconds, breaking its glass container. Newman hypothesizes that the explosion was the result of the presence of methane gas or a chemical oil dispersant in the water, but since the sample blew up, results for oil and petroleum content were inconclusive.

Gives a whole new meaning to “oil containment boom,” doesn’t it?

Watch the full WKRG report, in two parts, below:

WKRG.com

alabama, BP Oil Disaster, exploding water, gulf coast, Jessica Taloney, Media and BP Oil Disaster, WKRG

Jon Bershad

This isn’t BP’s fault. Clearly the water has actually been replicated by the alien in “The Thing.”
Cactus

Ugh… gotta love the early news version: “could swimming at the beach kill you? the test results are back… find out at 10!”

Yes, standard local news promo fare… and also why I’ve long stopped watching. You could get me to tune in at 10 without being THIS cheesy about it.
Integr8d

“The results are unsurprisingly well over this estimate”

Gotta love how bloggers are also PhD Chemists nowadays… Steven, lemme guess. Even without the gear necessary to form metrics, you could hold up a tube of oil-tainted water and say, ‘Yeeeeaaaah. That’s about 220ppm.”

SMILE
http://www.facebook.com/people/Chris-Johnson/558639285 Chris Johnson

What a great, scary headline, followed by a load of crap. You should be ashamed. BP is having to pay to run ads all over the country to try to help effected localities attract tourists and counter misrepresentations in the yellow media. In my opinion, scandal-driven media should have to pay for the advertising to counter their misdeeds. They are the only ones profitting from this nonsense.

The worst sample that could be found, apparently in a puddle (not representative), was said to be impacted by petroleum to the extent of 221 parts per million. For people that didn’t get through school with journalism, or communications degrees, 221 ppm is 22.1 parts per hundred thousand. That’s 2.21 parts per ten thousand. That’s 0.221 parts per thousand. That’s 0.0221 parts per hundred, or percent. That means that even though samples were collected in the most improper places possible, for representing actual water quality, improper places such as next to an oil boom or in a puddle where the water is evaporating, the worst that could be documented was still 99.9779 percent pure water.

This is junk science, for which the reporters and an unethical scientist (unethical, because no ethical professional would collect samples that way, in those locations), have concocted a scare headline and an inflammatory (Har!) story that will hurt the coastal communities. The people involved in this television and written story should be both ashamed and embarrassed.

In my professional opinion, the fact that the worst sample that could be documented was actually 99.9779 percent clean, givien the battle being fought with an enormous source for contamination, speaks well for our good fortune as a society, the efforts belatedly being brought to bear in the clean-up, and the extent to which much of the coastal environment has been spared from unnecessary impacts. Same exact facts, very different headline and story.