ABSTRACT
Petroleum existed long before humans developed the technological ability to retrieve it from the earth and use it as a source of energy. Dispersants with low toxicity have since been developed; however, toxicity tests must be completed for the dispersal oil as well as dispersant alone. The toxicity of complex mixtures such as crude oils and refined products is extremely difficult to assess, even when the toxicity of each individual component is known. If the pour point of the oil is higher than the temperature of the environment, the oil will tend to aggregate rather than spread as a liquid. The physical characteristics, including density, specific gravity, viscosity, pour point, and flash point, are generally derived from the total composition of petroleum and petroleum byproducts as a weighted average of the properties of individual compounds in the complex mixture. The shoreline mitigation methods employ a variety of chemical and physical techniques.
