Brief Overview... largest Oil Spill in History

... quotes from

In Search of an Oasis - Opportunity in the Middle East

 by Dan C. VanderMeer

The Persian Gulf War began when Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990. On 12 January 1991, air strikes averaging 2000 sorties a day against targets in Iraq began. The ground assault was launched from Saudi Arabia on February 23. When the firing ceased on February 28, the Iraqis had been routed and Kuwait and Iraq were devastated. Estimates of deaths from the conflict range from 100,000 to 200,000. Kuwait City was in shambles, and the infrastructure in Iraq was destroyed. This brief war was unique in at least two respects. It was the first to be televised live via satellite to a worldwide audience and it had an awesomely destructive environmental impact.

As the Iraqis fled, they set fire to the wells and storage tank farms in six Kuwait oil fields. (Iraqi forces were entrenched in and around these fields and the petroleum loading terminals, so it is probable that air strikes against these targets by the coalition forces ignited some fires.) Five million barrels of oil (260 million gallons) a day burned out of control from 500 wells. An estimated half million tons of thick black smoke darkened the sky. In late March of 1991, dozens of wells were still on fire. Smoke and soot rose thousands of feet and drifted with the wind. Heavy soot particles rained on Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. Lighter particles fell on the mountain snows 2000 km east in Pakistan. In the weeks after the war, concentrations of particulates in samples taken above the Rocky Mountains in the United States were 100 times background levels. In August, astronauts reported seeing black haze in the stratosphere.

The most dramatic impact of soot and gases was localized in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. In the immediate area, civilians of all ages, military service men and women, and the huge cadre of civilian advisors were covered with soot and inhaled the smoke and fumes. Everything they touched or ate was contaminated. Crops and livestock were heavily polluted.

Crude estimates of pollutants were made by a Gulf Emergency Response Team convened by the United States. They reported that the fires were emitting 100,000 tons of particulate, 50,000 tons of sulfur, and 850,000 tons of carbon dioxide per day.

While there were anecdotal reports of acute respiratory and dermal effects from individuals and health providers in Kuwait in the weeks and months after the cease fire, these reports were difficult to quantify in this hectic and tense period. No systematic follow-up of health effects attributed to the war has been done in the area. In the years after the war, 40,000 veterans from the United States have reported symptoms they have related to their service in the gulf. These include chronic headache, nausea, anxiety, depression, joint pain, reproductive dysfunction, and others. * In 1994, the U.S. Department of Defense completed a study of more than 10,000 veterans and concluded that no clear picture of a unique illness related to service in the Persian Gulf could be identified. An expert panel of the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine issued a cautious report lending credence to the veteran's complaints. In August 1995, a presidential commission on the gulf war syndrome held its first meetings. Its report is due in December 1996.

Environmental monitoring, exposure assessment, and surveillance for diseases and symptoms were not possible in the chaotic weeks after the cease fire. Rigorous longer term assessments and follow-up have been hindered by lack of specific data on exposures and the absence of a disease or condition specifically related to the war.

The Persian Gulf War produced the world's largest oil spill to date. The oil under the Burgan field, the largest in Kuwait, is under natural pressure and continued to flow into the desert sands creating a vast lake of oil. From 35 to 150 million barrels of unburned oil accumulated on Kuwait's desert. For about 500 km s along its west coast southward past Kuwait to Saudi Arabia, 8 million barrels of oil covered the shoreline. Over 1500 km² of water were covered with crude oil. Half of this was lost from tankers caught in the warfare and the rest spilled from storage tanks and pipelines emptied by the Iraqis.

The western shore of the Persian Gulf is shallow. It is a migratory pathway for water fowl, a source of fish for local consumption, and has coral reefs. The gulf opens at the Straits of Hormuz into the Indian Ocean. The strait is less than 70 km across, so natural flushing of the gulf takes years.

Petroleum products from all the oil-producing states in the Persian gulf are shipped to markets from terminals through the Straits of Hormuz. An annual average of at least 200,000 barrels of oil and oil products spill into the gulf. It is one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world. The millions of barrels spilled during the Persian Gulf War have settled on the bottom to join the millions spilled over the last four decades. Much of the shoreline is covered with a crust of dried oil. The Kuwait oil fields are back in production and millions of barrels of oil have become a part of the surrounding desert.

FOCUS  Vol 104, Number 3, March, 1996  Environmental Health Perspectives

Gulf War Syndrome Vets

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