Each environmental disaster is unique, with health consequences that depend on the intersection of the event, the geographic setting, and the characteristics of the local population. Yet, all environmental disasters require the identification of health consequences and strategies to mitigate them and provide lessons for how to do better in future disasters (1–6). The Prestige oil spill and the ...

Most real-life signalling is noisy and in many cases takes time. Information may be revealed gradually (many online customer reviews of a gadget) or by discrete events at random times (scientific breakthrough, oil spill, exposure of a corrupt politician). Both settings lead to behaviour different from noiseless or one-shot signalling situations. Signalling may occur in multiple disjoint interva...

A few weeks ago I was reflecting on the impact of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico when I received an e-mail asking me “to think and type some comments of my experiences post Katrina” as we were approaching the fifth anniversary of the worst natural or man-made disaster in the history of this country. It seems almost unreal to remember that event while evaluating another disaster, the worst ...

The Effect of Inspector Group Size and Familiarity on Enforcement and Deterrence The paper provides new insights into the productivity of teams and the relationship between the inspector and the inspected party. Exploiting exogenous variation in the number of inspectors that are sent to offshore oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, we find that adding an inspector does not simply result...

A biscalixarene framework, without long alkyl chains, has been readily synthesized in three steps starting from the parent calix[4]arene. The biscalix[4]arene 1 was able to form organogels in various alcoholic solvents; furthermore, it exhibited an excellent phase selective gelation property that is potentially useful in oil spill recovery.

An intensification of interest in environmental assessment during the last 2 decades has driven corporate efforts to better document environmental goals, improve environmental management systems, and increase awareness of the environmental and ecological effects of business operations. This trend has been motivated partly by regulatory requirements (such as the Toxics Release Inventory in the U...

Ground-water contamination by crude oil, and other petroleum-based liquids, is a widespread problem. An average of 83 crude-oil spills occurred per year during 1994-96 in the United States, each spilling about 50,000 barrels of crude oil (U.S. Office of Pipeline Safety, electronic commun., 1997). An understanding of the fate of organic contaminants (such as oil and gasoline) in the subsurface i...

List of Abbreviations CIIAPTER ONE General Introduction Pollution of Saudi Arabian soil with crude oil Chemistry and biodegradability of petroleum hydrocarbon Environmental fate of petroleum Factors influencing petroleum hydrocarbon biodegradation Distribution of petroleum-utilizing microorganisms in the environment Biological degradation of petroleum hydrocarbon Bacterial degradation of oil Fu...