It's not as sexy as oil-soaked turtles washing ashore, but the millions of gallons of chemical dispersant they're dumping into the Gulf deserves more attention.
President Obama only mentioned it today in the context of what it's used for: breaking up oil. Allegedly. Believe it or not, Bobby Jindal is the only upper level public official to have publicly expressed concern about the poisonous impact of the dispersant. From a liveblog of a Jindal press conference today:
"We're concerned about the subsea application of dispersent." [Jindal] asked that the entire column be tested. Asked BP to make a long-term commitment to monitoring the water. "You're talking about an impact that could hurt multiple generations of wildlife. These are the ocean's nurseries."
However, as Jed Lewison points out, BP had better not be the only outfit monitoring the water. Does anyone honestly believe that BP would be forthcoming about the large-scale destruction of marine ecologies from the dispersant alone? The impact is going to be measured in decades. I doubt BP will be closely monitoring the multigenerational damage and extinctions that will occur years down the road due to the massive doses of poison they're indiscriminately dumping into the Gulf.