An Oily Mess!

Oil contaminated soil may be a pain to clean up but we've found a better technique! This technique takes around a year and is used mostly in Lithuania but it is very natural and actually makes the soil well enough to plant in it. The process of removing oil can cause very high amounts of contamination in the soil so this technique is better because it gets rid of the oil while still including biodegradation. There are three steps to this process first, they use a biosurfactant solution to wash out the first part of the oil which actually the solution can be biodegraded and you can use it up to 10 times. The next step is, selected organisms treat the oil that is still in the soil and this lowers the contamination level a little more, then Phytoremediation can start. Lastly, this article tells that this method uses modified bacteria instead of chemicals to take away this oil which is what makes the soil able to be used in the end.

With oil contamination there are lots of steps and there are companies devoted just to oil spills and the cleaning process of them. The start of this usually if from a oil storage tank underground. Most of the time there will be a small leakage coming from the tanks but it will go undetected for a long period of time which makes it become much more serious. There have been way over one hundred oil spills in history and they still continue today. Although, the most serious oil spill was the Amoco Cadiz which spilled 68.7 million gallons of oil into the ocean.

I think that it is horrible how many oil spills there are today because it's really damaging our environment. I also feel that they should use this method for everything because its more natural and it makes it so you can reuse the oil for things and plant in the soil. One question I have though is, do they use similar techniques to remove oil from bodies of water and removing it from soil? I think they should try and prevent the leaks from happening rather than waiting for them to happen and then having a bigger mess in the future.