Dispersants: The Lesser of Two Evils

During the Deepwater Horizon spill, dispersants were sprayed onto oil slicks on the surface of the water, as well as directly into the escaping oil, to break up as much as possible. Ever since, scientists have been studying the impacts of these dispersants. They're now evenly split on whether their use was ultimately a good or bad choice for the environment. For some organisms, dispersant plus oil is a very toxic mix. For others, the dispersant itself was actually more toxic than the oil alone. And, for yet other another set of organisms, the dispersant helped, as oil posed the most serious threat.