Proposal
Project Category: Life Sciences
Question: Will exposure to propanol and ethanol, ingredients found in oil spill dispersants, mutate generations of fruit flies?
Article and how it relates to your experiment :
Science World Report: Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean up toxic to marine life.
The first thing everyone thinks off after an oil spill happens is how to treat it as fast as possible so less marine life will be harmed. Most often, we use a type of dispersant to dissolve the oil, but how often do we think of how harmful the dispersant is to marine life? In a recent report, it was shown that the dispersant is up to fifty-two times more toxic to marine life than the oil. This was also why there were so many animals mysteriously dying and found stranded after the oil spill was cleaned up (New York Times: More animals are dying, but the causes have not yet been determined).
We were inspired by this to test the damage that the dispersants put on animals by trying the dispersant toxics on easily and quickly bred fruit flies.
Purpose:
To test the effects that dispersants of oil spills have on marine life using fruit flies as an alternative to marine life.
Question: Will exposure to propanol and ethanol, ingredients found in oil spill dispersants, mutate generations of fruit flies?
Article and how it relates to your experiment :
Science World Report: Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean up toxic to marine life.
The first thing everyone thinks off after an oil spill happens is how to treat it as fast as possible so less marine life will be harmed. Most often, we use a type of dispersant to dissolve the oil, but how often do we think of how harmful the dispersant is to marine life? In a recent report, it was shown that the dispersant is up to fifty-two times more toxic to marine life than the oil. This was also why there were so many animals mysteriously dying and found stranded after the oil spill was cleaned up (New York Times: More animals are dying, but the causes have not yet been determined).
We were inspired by this to test the damage that the dispersants put on animals by trying the dispersant toxics on easily and quickly bred fruit flies.
Purpose:
To test the effects that dispersants of oil spills have on marine life using fruit flies as an alternative to marine life.