Twenty tar balls recovered from a beach in Key West on Florida's southern tip are not related to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the US Coast Guard said Wednesday. Captain Pat DeQuattro, commanding officer of the coast guard's Key West sector, said in a statement that officials had reached a "conclusion that these tar balls are not from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident."
Scientist reached their conclusion after sending samples of the tar to the US Coast Guard Marine Safety Laboratory in New London, Connecticut for testing.
The results provided a measure of relief to scientists tracking the oil gushing from a ruptured undersea well off the coast of Louisiana, who had warned that a powerful current could sweep the oil around the southern tip of the Florida peninsula and its fragile coral reefs.
Coast guard officials said they have been unable to determine the source of the tar balls, but DeQuattro said they would "continue to aggressively identify and clean up tar ball-contaminated areas in the Florida Keys."
