Book Review

Thomas D. Beamish's fine sociological study suggests we do not pay adequate attention to oil spills, a conclusion that may surprise readers of this journal. When a drunken Joseph Hazelwood slammed the Exxon Valdez oil tanker into Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, the resulting spill was calamitous. Images of birds and seals blackened by oil immediately dominated the news, prompting public outrage, an immediate cleanup effort and Congress's passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. Today the spill is recognized as one of the worst events in American environmental history.	1
How did an oil spill perhaps twice the size of the Exxon Valdez spill go undetected for over three decades? That is the question Beamish addresses in his study of Unocal's spill in California's Guadalupe Dunes. The Unocal spill was the single largest reported oil spill in United States history, with as much as 20 million gallons spilling into the sand. Unlike the Valdez spill, this disaster was slow to develop, occurring gradually over thirty-eight years. This disaster is far less famous than its Alaskan counterpart; Beamish calculated that the national press devoted nine stories to the Guadalupe Dunes spill and over five hundred to the Exxon Valdez spill between 1990 and 1996.	2
Beamish uses the spill as a case study of how cumulative acts of pollution develop. He uses models of social organization to examine the decision-making processes within Unocal, the regulating government agencies, and the local community that either suppressed information about the spill or prevented its disclosure and remediation for so many years. Using interviews, media reports, and corporate and regulatory administration records, Beamish constructs a record of how the interests in the region approached the spill over the years, with particular attention to the last two decades.	3
The chapters assessing the roles of employees and regulators in the spill are particularly impressive. Employees normalized the spill as individuals afraid to jeopardize their jobs remained silent about a practice that had occurred for years. Regulators including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Coast Guard had difficulty assessing jurisdiction over the spill, even after it had become apparent. They were slow to act because they were trained to address sudden events like a tanker spill rather than incremental damage. Finally, in 1990, the spill became conspicuous to the local community (with visibility of brown water, odors of petroleum, and the actions of two whistle-blowers), at which time it began to be perceived as a disaster and efforts at remediation began.	4
Silent Spill is a valuable contribution to the literature on industrial pollution, focusing on acts of pollution that quietly damage the environment and providing explanations for how these acts are allowed to continue over long periods of time. Beamish's model is applicable to studies of pollution in other industries, and as such, the text should prove useful to scholars interested in the effects of industrial activity on the environment.	5
Reviewed by Carl Zimring, who teaches in the History Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he recently completed his dissertation "Recycling for Profit: The Evolution of the American Scrap Industry."

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