When the hell did BP start pumping this toxin subsea and when was this approved?
April 30: The company reports it began "testing" subsea dispersant application with a 3,000 gallon application BEFORE any official approval of this practice:
http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse....
May 5: Tony Hayward mentioned beginning full scale subsea dispersant application after receiving an email suggestion on May 5th (in a BBC interview of 5/20, transcript not yet found)
May 10: BP official told the Associated Press news agency that the company had received US government approval to continuously pump dispersant chemicals underwater.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
May 14: Admiral Landry approves subsea dispersant application
http://www.grist.org/...
Also there is evidence that BP used about 2x the total amount of toxic dispersant and this was likely in the unapproved subsea application, while it didn't begin reporting application amount until May 17th.
If some quantitatively skilled analysts could check my numbers I would be appreciative. My calculations of the dispersant usage suggests there is almost as much "missing" dispersant as there is reported applied dispersant, ie 642,773 gallons missing versus 655,000 gallons reported applied.
The missing comes from changes in the reported available dispersant at http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.... when compared to the applied dispersant. The "available dispersant" decreases almost 2 fold faster than the applied dispersant, especially after May 5th
Maybe BP sold the dispersant on Ebay...but a more realistic scenario is unreported use on subsea application since no numbers for subsea application are given until May 17th.
So 2x more total toxic dispersant in the gulf and 10x more subsea application than reported, much of it prior to actual approval.