Alabama's WKRG wanted to investigate how much oil was in the water at the state's beaches so they collected samples. When a chemist tried to study it, the water exploded! Isn't this how an environmental horror movie usually starts?
Along with the scary news about just how much oil is in the ocean (between 16 and 221 parts per million when there should be, you know, zero) thanks to the BP oil spill, the most frightening thing from this report is that, when the chemist went to study one sample, it ended up blowing up the container he was keeping it in. That's some toxic shit, clearly. Since the water escaped in the explosion, the scientist couldn't determine exactly why it blew up, but he thinks it has something to do with the chemical dispersant that was put in the water. The crew went back four days later and collected more poisonous brine from the same site—near one of the booms supposed to keep oil slicks off of beaches—and found there was only 1 part per million of petroleum product in the water. That's not that much, but it's even scarier, because that means there is something worse in the water now.