Oil sheen on water is an occurrence that happens frequently.

Here’s a story from the News Tribune:

“The State Department of Ecology, U.S. Coast Guard pollution investigators and the Seattle Police Department Harbor Patrol responded to reports of a diesel fuel spill in in Salmon Bay, an area just south of Ballard in Seattle.

The spill was initially observed about 5 a.m. Saturday. The cause and volume of the spill are still under investigation, but investigators say there does not appear to any ongoing leak of fuel into the water.

According to the Ecology Department’s report:

• Oil spilled onto water typically forms oily patches that spread out quickly.
• These ‘oil slicks’ can cover many acres of water.
• All oil spills cause environmental damage, regardless of size.
• Oil is toxic to the environment and the damage starts as soon as the oil hits water.
• A single quart of oil has the potential to foul more than 100,000 gallons of water.

Oil sheen is insidious and almost impossible to remove from water by conventional methods.

The most common way of trying to stop an oil sheen from spreading is to deploy a containment boom around the source, even though this technique has shown to be very inefficient.

Some oil sheen responders employ vacuum trucks parked on the bank or in a boat. That vacuum truck would suck up hundreds of gallons of water an hour, only to recover the tiniest amount of oil and leaving the rest behind.

Skimmers prove to be useless for oil sheen, so absorbent polypropylene boom is used. Unfortunately, absorbent polypropylene boom only partially does the job because they sink, tear, rip and leach absorbed oil back into the water upon removal.

Our customers have found a better solution with our SheenGuard pillows and blankets. They are non-leaching, reduce man hours because they are so long-lasting, and have a low volumetric increase when fully saturated resulting in less volume to dispose of.

Removing oil sheen is one of Guardian Environmental Technologies specialties. Contact us for more information.