Sandra Levy, Associate Editor07.14.10
It didn’t take long for the nonwovens community to respond to the catastrophic oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the result of an explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in April. As its continued efforts to plug the leak fail, absorbent nonwovens booms are being deployed by the thousands to keep oil offshore. A boom is a five-foot-long nonwoven tube made in an eight to 12-inch diameter which is stuffed with various polypropylene materials, including meltblown nonwovens, and covered with netting.