It was just over six years ago when disaster struck the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizons oil rig erupted into a fireball that killed 11 people and dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf for three months. Tourism was shot, beaches were ruined by tar, and the Gulf’s wildlife continues to suffer. The company that owned the oil rig—BP—was forced to pay $20.8 billion to the states surrounding the Gulf, but will that money help repair the damages caused by the largest oil spill in US history?
Could Some Of The BP Water Damage Be Reversed?
For now, communities all over the Gulf States have plans to use the BP settlement money to revitalize their tourism industries, and clean their beaches, but there remains very little they can do to help clean the remnants of oil from the water itself. This has left wildlife at risk from continued exposure to the traces of oil, and now conservationists have discovered a massive die-off of the Gulf’s baby dolphins. Researchers suspect that oil exposure has devastated the dolphin population in the Gulf of Mexico, but new discoveries could lead to a solution.
Scientist have designed nanobots to help clean the world’s oceans. These devices are no bigger than the width of a human hair, and they can use a combination of chemical reactions and magnetic influence to help clean the oceans of pollutants. For now, scientists are concentrating on cleaning heavy waste metals like arsenic, cadmium, and mercury from the waters of the world, but they are also looking to adapt the bots to clean up lead and other pollutants.
These futuristic machines are the next step in protecting our world from ourselves, so remember to support the sciences, and hopefully tomorrow will be a better place for our children.
A message from you BP settlement attorneys at Colson Hicks Eidson.
