The Senate environment committee's senior Republican today led a defense of BP PLC's use of more than 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico but left the door open to working with Democrats on reforming the use of the products "if there's a need for it."

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a conservative who has battled the majority party on cap-and-trade climate legislation and other regulatory efforts, held his fire at Democrats while chastising U.S. EPA for its dispersant strategy over the course of the 86-day Gulf oil gusher. The agency initially pressed BP to choose a less toxic alternative to its preferred Corexit dispersant but shifted to emphasizing limits on the chemicals' use after the oil company resisted.

"I am concerned that EPA's back and forth" over dispersant approvals, Inhofe said, "which runs counter to having a list approved prior to an emergency -- may have exacerbated the damages caused by the BP spill."

Another Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which today examined the effects of dispersant spraying in the Gulf, said the Obama administration and BP "made the right choice" to deploy the products.

"I would suggest that those who criticize the use of dispersants are the same people who cannot offer one alternative to the use of dispersants in this situation," Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said.

The environment panel hearing comes as senators weigh politically feasible responses to the Gulf disaster. Even as Democratic leaders punted votes on a scaled-down energy plan until September at the earliest, a dispersant reform measure authored by Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) appears unlikely to move forward without hitching a ride on that broader bill (E&E Daily, Aug. 4).

Inhofe criticized provisions in an oil spill bill approved by the House last week that would impose a moratorium on dispersant use until EPA could perform more in-depth testing, stating that he is "not sure" new legislation is needed to enhance the approval process for using the products during emergencies. But "I commit today to work with Senator Lautenberg" on bipartisan dispersant reform, Inhofe added, "if there's a need for it."

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told senators last month that changes to existing dispersant rules would help in arming the agency with "critical transparency and openness protections that right now EPA cannot provide by law" (Greenwire, July 15). The agency's assistant administrator for research, Paul Anastas, echoed those remarks today in telling Barrasso that "we do need to look back how the National Contingency Plan [governing oil-spill response] brings us in the data that we need."

Lingering concern over the consequences of dispersant use continues among some Gulf residents and scientists, particularly as states along the coast open up more waters to commercial fishing and the government performs sensory "smell" tests on seafood samples for components of dispersants. The advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility today filed a legal petition aimed at pressing the Food and Drug Administration to begin more in-depth chemical testing for dispersants in seafood, as is currently done for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons present in spilled oil.

PEER executive director Jeff Ruch has said that several EPA toxicologists have approached his group to raise concerns about the internal process that led to the agency's strings-attached approval of dispersants in the Gulf,

EPA has conducted limited acute toxicity tests on dispersants alone and mixtures of the products with oil, but Anastas told senators that more long-term research was in the works. "While we have some knowledge of how these dispersants travel in the water column," he said, EPA hopes to study "specifically, how long it will take, how they will be metabolized, what are the breakdown products."