Oil-dispersing chemicals were treated for cleaning persistent-type crude oil from experimentally contaminated New Jersey coastal beaches and were found to be generally ineffective. Although they completely cleaned the surface of the oiled sand, they removed little of the total oil. Instead they caused the oil to penetrate more deeply into the underlying sand, thereby compounding the pollution problem by expanding the zone of pollution, complicating any subsequent mechanical removal and, possibly, causing the oil to persist longer. Chemical treatment failed to induce 'quicksand' or cause perceptible erosion of beach sand. A decrease in the 'cohesiveness' of the sand was observed, but this also occurred in the presence of oil alone and could not be attributed to the presence of chemical. (Author)

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