Giving Compass' Take:

• Emily Pontecorvo reports on a new sponge being tested that has the potential to clean oil spills and make a great impact on clean water. 

• How can more transparency on oil spills help advance prevention research? 

• Here's an article on the devastating effects 6 years after the oil pipeline burst. 

The secret to cleaning up contaminated water may lie in the cheap, common polyurethane foam used in mattresses. In a study published in the journal Nature Sustainability this week, scientists tested the ability of the material, enhanced with a special coating, to soak up tiny droplets of oil suspended in water. They found that it consistently captured almost all of the oil in under three hours.

The sponge could help address water contamination from the oil and gas industry. From catastrophic oil spills like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident, to the thousands of smaller spills that occur each year, to the more than 100 billion barrels of toxic wastewater produced annually from fracking, the scale of the issue is alarming, especially given how limited the available technology is to clean it up.

“Right now water is a huge challenge,” said Pavani Cherukupally, a research associate* in chemical engineering at Imperial College London and the lead author of the study. “Having this economically affordable technology will help us reduce the environmental impact, produce clean water, and also recover these resources. This recovered oil will have some value to it.”

Read the full article about cleaning up oil spills by Emily Pontecorvo at Grist.