Be wary of "Mission Accomplished" claims for BP disaster clean up

Back in early May, I interviewed experts on dispersants and oil spill clean up and wrote "Out of Sight: BP's dispersants are toxic — but not as toxic as dispersed oil."

Chemically dispersing oil spills "solves the political problem of visible oil but not the environmental problem," Robert Brulle, a 20-year Coast Guard veteran and an affiliate professor of public health at Drexel University, told me. These dispersants "do not actually reduce the total amount of oil entering the...