Scottish Quotes Sayings

oil disaster

for oil disaster means environmental disasters caused by oil .

In particular leakage of oil from tankers in English oil spill and specialized in the field frequently translated into Italian bleed (or rather spill), is deeply damaging the marine environment. In fact, oil has a specific gravity less than water, so that initially form a waterproof film to ' oxygen above the free surface of ' water, in addition to causing obvious damage to physical phenomena and direct toxic to the macrofauna, a ' anaerobic killing the plankton . The subsequent precipitation on the sea floor replicates the effect on benthic organisms . The restoration of the environment damage takes months or years.

The issue of oil is usually caused by human activity, however, can sometimes be caused by natural events such as fractures of the seabed. It is not easy to determine the amount of oil that is lost at sea every year, but estimates of those losses seem to wander about on an average of 4 million tonnes per year throughout the world and 600,000 tonnes for only Mediterranean . Oil has harmful effects to animals that these losses are immersed in oil vessels. In birds, the oil penetrates into the plumage, reducing the capacity of thermal insulation (making the animals vulnerable to environmental temperature changes) and making it unfit for swimming and the feathers on the fly, so the birds do not have the ability to obtain food and escape from predators. The instinct of the birds takes them to clean their feathers with the use of the bill, but this way they ingest the oil, with harmful effects on the kidneys, liver and digestive system, the latter effects the body, together with all 'inability to get food, leading to dehydration and imbalances in metabolism. These disorders can add effects, and for a cascade mechanism are reflected in hormonal changes. The crude oil has in fact often in a senior position of polycyclic aromatic compounds, often in the biological mechanisms involved in the wide field of endocrine disruptors .

Similarly, birds, marine mammals exposed to oil with symptoms similar to those that occur in birds, in particular the fur of sea otters and seals lose their power of thermal insulation, causing hypothermia.

(from http://www.wikipedia.org/ )