The use of booms made of hair and fur in the efforts to clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was rejected on Friday by the Unified Area Command for the Deepwater Horizon/BP Response, which is in charge of all response efforts.

The plan was proposed by the San Francisco-based organization Matter of Trust, which calls for donations of hair and fur that are placed in nylon stockings. The organization reported on its *website* [MatterofTrust.org]that its calls for donations had been answered from around the nation and world. According to the website, the organization has opened 19 warehouses spread along Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida that are receiving hair from donors.

The command announced Friday that while this suggestion was submitted to BP as an alternative for containing the oil spill, it was not considered feasible.

The command cited a February 2010 side-by-side field test conducted during an oil spill in Texas, in which a boom with commercial absorbents picked up more oil and much less water than a hair boom, “making it the better operational choice.”

“Our priority when cleaning up an oil spill is to find the most efficient and expedient way to remove the oil from the affected area while causing no additional damage,” said Charlie Henry, NOAA’s Scientific Support Coordinator in Robert, La. “One problem with the hair boom is that it became waterlogged and sank within a short period of time.”
In New Orleans hair and fur was being collected at the Spa in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Canal Street by an employee, Daisye Dykes, who could not be reached for comment Friday night. News outlets around the nation have reported local hair collection efforts to aid in the Gulf oil spill.

But the command said on Friday that it was asking individuals and organizations to discontinue the collection of hair for the hair boom.

Attempts by e-mail and telephone on Friday night to reach Lisa Craig Gautier and her husband, Patrice Olivier Gautier, who are listed on the website as the founders of the organization, were unsuccessful.

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