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Hold your hair: Fur for oil mats piling up, unused
By Gina Spadafori
May 14, 2010
The reason I didn’t go all over-the-top with the feel-good story of getting hair and fur for “booms” to fight the Gulf Oil disaster was because I figured the logistics of the effort — run by a very small operation thousands of miles away — just didn’t hold a lot of promise. I checked to make sure the organization was real and offered the information, but that was about it.
Still, everyone and her six brothers and four sisters was all over the story. And I know that’s because we all want to help, in any way we could, however implausible the idea was as a solution.
I don’t take a lot of joy in noting that all that hair and fur isn’t being put to use, and BP isn’t all that grateful for the effort. From The Rachel Maddow Show’s blog:
BP says its responders aren’t using the hair booms because they don’t work as well as commercially made booms and they tend to leave a mess.
[...]
BP may not be using the hair booms, but volunteers along the Gulf Coast are going to keep making them. Amanda Bacon of Mobile [Alabama] has been hosting Boom B Q’s, and she took delivery on 10,000 pounds of alpaca hair just this week. With some help from the charity Matter of Trust, Bacon’s got booms piling up at a local restaurant and in donated space in a warehouse.
“Our hope is that we can deploy them, but we don’t have permission yet,” Bacon says. “We can’t get anybody to use them and we can’t tell people to deploy them.” [...] Despite assurances from the Deepwater Horizon Response team, it’s not clear whether there’s enough of commercially available boom favored by official responders to go around.
Read the rest. The way things are going, it seems that there aren’t enough animals in the world to shed enough fur to mop of this mess, anyway.
Image courtesy MaddowBlog: Making fur/hair booms from piles of donated hair, soon to be piles of unused booms.
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Okay, but the question is, who cares what BP wants? There’s no reason to believe they’re telling the truth about having enough commercial booms, and it’s quite likely that individuals and communities are going to find themselves scrambling to protect their own shoreline any way they can.
Comment by Lis — May 14, 2010 @ 3:07 pm
Reprise the “send booties to New York for the search and rescue dogs” fiasco.
Sigh.
Comment by H. Houlahan — May 14, 2010 @ 9:47 pm
Reprise the “send booties to New York for the search and rescue dogs” fiasco.
That was my exact thought when I saw the “send hair to clean up the oil spill” messages.
A mountain of dog booties went unused at the World Trade Center. USAR dogs don’t wear booties.
Likewise, a blob of oily mess is a blob of oily mess with or without a bunch of hair mixed into it.
There’s almost no point advising people not to do these things. They seem to be compelled to do SOMETHING when disasters strike.
I’m grateful that the Pet Connection exercised appropriate skepticism on the hair alerts.
Comment by LauraS — May 14, 2010 @ 10:15 pm
Laura, I have some of those booties!
Our dear friend Sue — a USAR handler who was without an operational dog at the time — was working a veterinary station at ground zero.
She had a freakin’ washing machine box full of donated booties from the truckloads that got dumped at the vet tents. Ranging from excellent muttluks to hand-knitted poodle boots.
For the next couple years, whenever she traveled in her RV to conferences or training events, handlers would dig through the box looking for boots that would fit their dogs.
The four or five pairs I took have served us well as bandage covers for the team’s dogs. We still have most of them, have only lost a few over the years. Wish I’d taken more little ones, now that we have more small dogs on the team.
The 9-11 boot myth was bad enough; the mountains of useless donated CRAP that I saw sitting out in the rain in Mississippi a couple weeks post-Katrina were a horror. More junk to be bulldozed into the giant landfills. Churches and other groups just rented trucks, stuffed them with anything people would donate, and drove them down without any plan. Down jackets, cocktail dresses, pac boots, ski gloves, rhinestone belts — really, people? — I mean, really?
Comment by H. Houlahan — May 15, 2010 @ 7:27 am
(cocktail dresses???)
Comment by Mary Mary — May 15, 2010 @ 2:08 pm
Yes, because when your house is floating shrapnel in the Gulf of Mexico, what you really need is a sharp little black strapless number with a few sequins.
For raking through the six feet of toxic muck in search of what’s left of the foundation, natch.
Comment by H. Houlahan — May 15, 2010 @ 7:02 pm
I’d be more impressed with all this clever snark at the expense of people responding to requests for help if it weren’t for the fact that our source of information that hair booms aren’t useful or needed is BP, which has been lying and downplaying the importance and size of the leak from the very beginning.
Including asserting that, compared to the size of the Gulf, it’s really only a small amount of oil. Giant Plumes of Oil Found Forming Under Gulf of Mexico
How can we possibly doubt the word of BP?
Comment by Lis — May 16, 2010 @ 6:17 am
You are basically advocating for more cynicism by telling people to throw the fur out. It will come in handy; they have not even scratched the surface of how bad this is going to be.
The organization, Matter of Trust, is calling for Haz Mat specialists and is very responsible on how they will be disposing of the used booms WHEN they are used (as RCRA hazardous waste).
I respect the skepticism but this seems a bit irresponsible. This approach won’t solve the inevitable but it is certainly not a sequined belt in the aftermath of Katrina.
~Dog
Comment by Dog — May 16, 2010 @ 2:01 pm
I’m not at ALL advocating for cynicism. I’m advocating for some common sense, and for the national media and others to stop automatically
reportingrepeating things without questioning them.Throw the fur out? Make scarves out of it, if that makes you happy. The world will probably be better served than adding to the tons of fur that cost money, time and fuel to get there. Ever heard of “food miles”? How about “fur miles”?
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 16, 2010 @ 5:37 pm
As far as I know, BP has not commented on the hair for oil cleanup issue.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a fact sheet that said: “Recent reports of a need for hair are exaggerated and not helpful to the response effort.”
Comment by LauraS — May 16, 2010 @ 8:13 pm
Laura, Gina quoted from Rachel Maddow’s blog:
BP says its responders aren’t using the hair booms because they don’t work as well as commercially made booms and they tend to leave a mess.
So unless there’s some reason to think that Rachel Maddow is lying, apparently BP has commented on this. That same blog post also says:
Despite assurances from the Deepwater Horizon Response team, it’s not clear whether there’s enough of commercially available boom favored by official responders to go around.
Here’s the NOAA factsheet you and a bunch of articles quote from but don’t bother to link to, and which neither Gina nor Maddow referenced.
And a Tampa Bay Online article quoting an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of South Florida, who isn’t quite so sure we’re all stupid:
“The technology is viable. It could be effective, it depends on how much hair you get,” said Ryan Toomey, assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of South Florida. “Whether or not we have enough hair on hand to make a viable difference, I don’t know.”
The hair-pantyhose combination sucks in between 5 and 50 times its weight in oil, he said. And you can wring out the oily material from the hair and use the device again.
The pantyhose booms could be used to help get a leg up on smaller coastline areas, Toomey said, but he doesn’t see them being used on a larger scale.
So maybe the rush to make sure people understand they’re stupid to think they’re doing any good by donating hair is a teensy bit premature. Unless, of course, you think BP is going to be giving a lot of concern and attention to “smaller coastline areas,” when they’re still very busy downplaying the size and seriousness of the leak.
Comment by Lis — May 16, 2010 @ 11:33 pm
Wow Lis, overreacting much?
Lis, I’m a chemical engineer too. I’ve worked in the technology divisions for one of the super-major “Big Oil” companies (not BP), since 1987. So forgive me if I don’t get all starry-eyed over snippets from an assistant professor of chemical engineering who may or may not have expertise on this subject, or whose positions may or may not have been represented accurately by the news media.
Hair stuffed in pantyhose can suck up 5 to 50 times its weight in oil and be wrung out and reused? Perhaps, but you might agree that bath towels have a really good ability to suck up a lot of liquid and they can go through many soak-it-up/wring-it-out cycles without falling apart.
No, I’m not suggesting that everybody package up their bath towels and ship them off to the Gulf Coast so they can fill warehouses along with all the hair that’s piling up in warehouses there. I’m suggesting that these speculations aren’t describing any unusual properties, nor are they describing anything necessarily useful or needed in the response effort.
I made no claim about Maddow (or anybody else) lying — where’d that come from? I made no comment about Maddow at all.
You wrote:
“our source of information that hair booms aren’t useful or needed is BP”
And yet the group that’s been leading the hair collection effort, Matter of Trust, has been quoted as saying that BP hasn’t responded to them about whether they want the hair booms.
My point is, NOAA — one of the US government agencies leading this response effort — issued an official statement that the hair is not helpful in this response. NOAA is “our source of information that hair booms aren’t useful or needed.”
Comment by LauraS — May 17, 2010 @ 12:59 am
I made no claim about Maddow (or anybody else) lying — where’d that come from? I made no comment about Maddow at all.
You said “As far as I know, BP has not commented on the hair for oil cleanup issue.”
The central point of this blog post was that BP said it didn’t want the hair booms. Gina quoted from Maddow’s blog to that effect. So the choices are, you didn’t read Gina’s post, or you think that Maddow is misreporting somehow. Please do forgive me for thinking you read the blog post from which this comment thread grew.
Comment by Lis — May 17, 2010 @ 4:37 am
Let’s back up the truck.
Take BP out of it. Take Rachel Maddow out of it. Stop. Turn off the engine and cool it.
Here is the actual point of what I was trying to say:
People need to be more critical and skeptical in general, but never more so than in times of disaster, because that’s when the emotions come into play, and that’s when well-meaning but incapable operations and con men both get rolling.
What I look at when I see stories like the “hair boom”:
1) Is it a real organization? In this case, yes. But a small one, with no indication (from what I can tell) of a management capable of handling such a large effort.
2) What’s its history? In the case, a simple Google search turned up a WSJ article (cited in my original post) that reported the organization was sitting on a warehouse of hair it couldn’t figure out a way to deploy, BEFORE the BP disaster. Wow, not good.
3) Does the solution proposed work any better than the options? And if so, are the logistics of deployment favorable? For the former, it appeared from light review that hair worked. Better? Unknown. Logistics possibilities? Poor. The organization was small, thousands of miles away and seems to be unlikely of scalability.
Many businesses fail when their product becomes a hit. Sound funny, but it’s very true. Many charities do, too: Google Terri Crisp and Noah’s Wish post-Katrina for a classic example of an organizational disaster of scalability. A well-meaning and well-respected organization blown apart in the aftermath of a disaster that forced such rapid growth on it that it imploded.
So … when all the media were promoting the “hair boom” boom, people were e-mailing it to all their friends and it was all over Facebook and Twitter, I ran it through my test and came up:
Probable FAIL.
So instead of a “feel good” blog post, I offered a skeptical one. And put the kybosh on two of our other bloggers who disagreed with me. (They were good with my decision after I explained.)
Look, we ALL want to help. But sometimes the efforts you make are wasted, and sometimes the efforts actually make things worse.
Which is why when you get a popular appeal, you have to stop and think it through. And sometimes, you just have to STOP, period.
Now, what would have changed the situation? If there were buy-in on the front end, either from BP or the federal government. Or even a charity effort on the part of a company that really does logistics well, like Wal-Mart, which, if you all remember, was getting water and ice into the Katrina zone when FEMA was effing up.
The logistics and scalability problems must be dealt with in advance of need. Always.
Didn’t see that. What I did see was a lot of hair/fur being stuffed into boxes and piling up everywhere. Which is, apparently, what has happened and is now continuing to happen.
Two words, and all the bloggers here hear them constantly:
Question Everything.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 17, 2010 @ 6:53 am
Laura I have packed up all my Laura Ashley towels. Please tell me where to mail them.
Comment by H. Houlahan — May 17, 2010 @ 7:31 am
Sacramento. Thank you.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 17, 2010 @ 7:40 am
And by the way, on smaller scale …
When I was working at the day job (as a communications specialist for the county’s publicly owned electric utility) it was (and remains, although I am no longer there) routine to conduct “table top” exercises in coordination with other agencies to “practice” a multi-agency county-wide, region-wide and even larger response to disasters of all sorts.
We would roll our eyes and wish we didn’t have to go to these meetings, but it’s ESSENTIAL to be prepared for all the possibilities, and have areas of responsibility assigned. And keep everything reviewed regularly to stay fresh.
Because … you can’t make this stuff up on the fly. Not ever. It just doesn’t work.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 17, 2010 @ 8:50 am
I was one of first to want to jump all over this, too G. It feels like we are so small and only one person when reading the media news and seeing the photos. Often, the “manual” doing of something makes people feel better than actually just watching or cutting a check to an organization. I think this is human nature. To try and help.
It does take people like you and critics to go beneath the surface to see if the frenzy of efforts are 1. helping 2. the org can handle a mass media push 3. if there is another way to help which gives better results.
I keep thinking about Dr. Becker using that term Ready, Fire, Aim. Or was that your term first? ;)
Comment by ericka — May 17, 2010 @ 9:29 am
“manual labor” I meant
Comment by ericka — May 17, 2010 @ 9:30 am
“Two words, and all the bloggers here hear them constantly:
Question Everything.”
AMEN, Gina! We become easy targets when matters of the heart and animals are in front of us. Learning that every week at the horse auction.
Comment by Sarah Andrew — May 17, 2010 @ 9:40 am
Ericka … that’s a Dr. Becker original! :)
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 17, 2010 @ 9:55 am
Lis, lighten up please. I do not understand your hostility on this issue. You accuse me of name calling (“stupid”) and tossing around insults (“lying”) that I never made or even hinted at.
Now you’ve apparently decided I’m illiterate on top of that.
I read Gina’s blog post. I read the Maddow piece. There’s an unsourced reference to an unnamed “BP says..” Was this just some unauthorized BP employee’s off-the-cuff opinion — which doesn’t mean much — or was it an approved, corporate position? If it’s the latter, where is this position quoted from a named, corporate spokesperson or found in a corporate position statement? And why is Matter of Trust being quoted as saying they haven’t heard from BP about whether BP wants the hair booms?
Regardless, my point is that one of the US government agencies (NOAA) that is leading this disaster response issued an OFFICIAL, PUBLIC, WRITTEN position statement that pet/human hair booms are not helpful toward this response effort.
Comment by LauraS — May 17, 2010 @ 11:21 am
Laura, in Gina’s post, the unsourced quote from BP in the Maddowblog was the only basis offered for saying that this was now proven to be a silly idea.
The NOAA factsheet was not mentioned. Even when you eventually mentioned it, you didn’t bother to link to it. I did, after I did a bit of digging to find it.
Comment by Lis — May 17, 2010 @ 2:10 pm
Thank you Lis. As a scientist myself and a mistrusting skeptic of everything, I did look into this.
It is true, this will not soak up all of the large spill in the ocean; nothing will. For the smaller coastline areas, it is helpful.
See the studies/projects in the attached link. It is time to think outside of the norm and try more natural solutions. They are dumping TONS of toxic chemicals on top of the oil right now. What is it hurting to try something on a smaller scale?
Please look into the information and not rely on 2nd and 3rd hand opinions. Who cares if they are piling up in warehouses? It costs us nothing and they will be used.
http://matteroftrust.org/programs/natural.html
Those that have their minds made up to be so obstinate, that is fine, just stay out of the way, the rest of us will try to effect change.
Comment by Dog — May 17, 2010 @ 9:32 pm
Those that have their minds made up to be so obstinate, that is fine, just stay out of the way, the rest of us will try to effect change.
What is it about this topic that brings out these hostile responses? Ya know, none of us here caused this mess. Ease up, already.
Comment by LauraS — May 18, 2010 @ 12:07 am
Why do you interpret education to be hostile?
Comment by Dog — May 18, 2010 @ 7:14 am
You’ll have to excuse us, “Dog,” if we doubt your credentials as a “scientist” without any information, including your name. Both Laura and Lis are real people — intelligent, regular contributors here both of whom I have talked to and respect. Even when they’re disagreeing with each other, or with me.
You’re not “educating.” You’re trolling. Good-bye.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 18, 2010 @ 7:27 am
1) BP will be posting a press release with information on how they will be deploying the boom and natural fibers to soak up oil.
2) Laundry lint - a lot of you have suggested recycling laundry lint, especially from hotels. This might work for furniture stuffing and we look forward to researching this more after the Gulf response. For oil spill booms, lint may contain polyester and we only want natural fiber stuffing. Also, lint will disintegrate into tiny pieces and come out of the nylon mesh.
3) Every 12pm Noon PST, we are sending out addresses for the 19 Temporarily Donated Warehouses in the Gulf. Please don’t ship to these addresses after June 10, 2010. If there is more need for boom after all these packages are received, it will go to other warehouses.
If you have already contacted us to request an address, we are replying to each of you individually as well because our bulk emails may be going to your spam folders. We hope you will all hear from us over the next few days. Please don’t resend any address requests to us before May 24th, as it will double the work for our volunteers and we need our volunteers happy!
Thank you all so very much! YOU ALL DID IT! YOU MOBILIZED AN INTERNATIONAL RECYCLING MOVEMENT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT IN UNDER 3 WEEKS!
Lisa Gautier
http://www.MatterOfTrust.org
Comment by Dog — May 19, 2010 @ 2:30 pm