Abstract
IN a recent publication (“Oil Navigable Waters, H.M.S.O., 1925, 6d.) the made a valuable contribution to abating the pollution of the sea by oil. The inquiries made by the engineering staff show that those ships which carry fuel oil in bulk and use their oil tanks for water ballast are the most likely to cause pollution at present, and in the near future. In these cases a large bulk of water is mixed with oil, and is separable from the oil only with difficulty and un-economically. It is considered that separators can now be designed to deal with any ordinary mixture of oil and water so efficiently that the water discharged from this mixture into the sea is sufficiently free from oil to be innocuous, and the provisions of the Oil in Navigable Waters Act of 1922 are ensuring that oil-free water from such mixtures is being pumped into the sea at least within the three-mile limit. Nevertheless, if the shores of Britain are to be kept free from oil, it will be necessary to extend the limit to a much greater distance than three miles to restrict the pollution to that oil, which, Lord Bearsted has pointed out in the Times, may be escaping from vessels sunk during the War.
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Oil in Navigable Waters. Nature 116, 229–230 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/116229a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/116229a0