Pollution in the Gulf: Monitoring the marine environment

M ore than 2 years after the Gulf conflict, scientists are continuing to keep a close watch on marine pollution stemming from the war. Following the conflict in early 1991, major concern was raised worldwide when an estimated four to eight million barrels of crude oil were directly released into the Persian Gulf from the Sea Island terminal in Kuwait. Such amounts clearly made it the largest oil spill in history. The catastrophe was exacerbated when Kuwaiti oil fields were ignited. They burned for 250 days, sending enormous smoke plumes into the air. From the best available estimates, some 500 million barrels (67 million tonnes) of emitted or ignited oil were added to the Gulf as aerosols, soot, toxic combustion products, and gases. Even if only a few percent of these emissions were deposited in the coastal marine environment, it would far surpass the amounts of crude oil that actually were spilled. The commonly held belief was that the pollution could readily spread far beyond the Gulf. The magnitude of the pollution, and the types of toxic contaminants involved, led to a worldwide response through the United Nations system. An inter-agency plan of action was developed quickly to address the immediate problems and the potential impact of war-related contaminants in the Gulf environment. As one of its steps, the co-ordinating agency — the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) — asked the IAEA's Marine Environment Laboratory (MEL) in Monaco to help make a preliminary assessment of the situation. The Laboratory's main goal in initial surveys was to map the extent and general degree of the war-related pollution throughout the Gulf. In carrying out the work, scientists drew upon the IAEAMEL's previous extensive experience in