Word: crotty
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...water birds, their gooey bodies strewed along a filthy shore. It is a sadly familiar scene in the wake of a major oil spill. For one man, however, the sight evoked more curiosity than pathos. After viewing photos of the 1967 Torrey Canyon grounding off the Cornish coast, Al Crotti, an American international lawyer based in London, had a novel idea: "If feathers attracting the oil are part of the problem, why can't feathers be part of the solution?" Why not indeed? Now being added to the arsenal of weapons for fighting oil spills is Seaclean, the catchy...
...Crotti's barnyard brainstorm has already undergone tests at a 31,500-gal. spill in the Mississippi River 20 miles downstream from New Orleans. The oil had spread over a 14-mile area, washing into coves and turning the marshy ground into a black mush the locals call "gumbo." While strings of floating booms helped contain the spill, a four-man team from Peterson Maritime Services, the largest private firm in the gulf area treating oil spills, began tossing out about 100 lumpy white squares from their flat-bottomed swamp boats. Almost at once, the muck began to stick...
Some research was done, says Dan Barry, a Miami businessman who helped Crotti underwrite the bags' development in the U.S. "We tried fancier cross-stitching and buttons on the bags, and refining the feathers, but they just didn't work as well. The way they naturally are is the way they work best...
...addition to being cheap and easily obtainable, Crotti claims that the bags have several advantages over other methods. Unlike booms or boats, they can be used in heavy seas, where they can be strung together and dropped over oil concentrations. Unlike straw, another natural absorbent, the pillows are easy to retrieve with a long-handled pole or a net rigged between two trawlers. They are very light, easy to stack and transport to spill sites. After use, they can be buried or burned without causing toxic smoke...
Died. Dr. André Crotti, 84, Swiss-educated, internationally famed goiter specialist and author (Thyroid and Thy-mus); in Columbus, Ohio, on the day that his French Artist-Brother Jean Crotti, 79, a forerunner of the surrealist movement and first developer of the now popular gemmaux technique (TIME, March 25), died in Paris...