Gulf Water “Sample Exploded” When Chemist Tested for Oil

 This is an excerpt from a local news feed from an Alabama  station reporting on their independent water sampling from the Gulf. One of their samples contained so many hydrocarbons that it BLEW UP during testing! 

 (excerpt) News Five collected samples of water and sand from Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Katrina Key and Dauphin Island. To our eyes, the samples appeared normal. We asked  analytical chemist Bob Naman, “When testing for oil… how much would be normal on the beach?”. His response was, “I wouldn’t think you’d find very much on the beach. there’s no real ‘normal’ amount. normal is ‘none detected.'”… a chemist with nearly thirty years of experience… he wouldn’t expect to see any more than 5 parts per million of the greasy stuff.

   Gulf Shores beach water, right where people were swimming, showed 66 parts per million. Another sample was a spot in Orange Beach, where we found kids playing, and we found our highest content of oil and petroleum. 221 parts per million.

   When Naman added an organic solvent to separate the oil from the water, collected at Dauphin Island Marina, just like he did with all the other samples, this sample exploded right in his lab. “It was almost instantaneous. Actually, maybe one second. that’s just weird.” The result surprised even our chemist.