"Danger to Fisheries from Oil and Tar Pollution of Waters."
Bureau of Fisheries 1921, 8 pages.
Recently the casting of oil on already sorely troubled waters has Increased at such a rate, has been acoused as the source of so many ills of fishermen and shell fishermen and even of ornithologists, and has become such an obvious nuisance, that a considerable realization of the extent of the contamination and a sense of the possible evil effects have been aroused.
So great is the discharge of oils of various sorts that in this country it has been proposed to skim off the oilfrom some harbor waters and make it available by proper treatment. In Switzerland a patent has been taken out for the recovery of oilsfrom backwaters.
It is very desirable, therefore, to present a brief review of the information available regarding the extent and nature of oil and oil-like pollutions with consideration of the possibilities
of danger therefrom.
Tar and tar oiIs are poisonous in great dilutions. Tar or tar oils result from distillations of coal, petroleum, woods, etc. These distillation products are very complex and varying substances in composition, but all may be assumed to contain some of the substances which, in very weak dilutions, have been shown to be highly poisonous to various fishes.
Phenols and cresols (in dilutions of less then 100 parts per million) have been found quickly fatal by Butterfield and Shelford.
Other constituents which are quickly fatal in the dilutions indicated are phenanthene and naphthalene (4 to 5 parts per million); xylene, toluene, benzene and ethylene (22 to 65 parts per million); sulphur compounds, as hydrogen sulphide (5 parts per million); sulphur dioxide(16 parts per million); carbon bisulphide (100 parts per million); thiophene (27 parts per million); ammonia (7 parts per million); and ammonium salts and other nitrogenized compounds (some hundred parts per million); quinoline and isoquinoline (50 to 65 parts per million).
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