Can you really ship pet hair to fight the gulf oil spill?

Factual Questions
1

Not sure if I should post a link or not, but there’s an ecologically-oriented recycling site that claims to be collecting pet hair to make oil-absorbing “hair booms” to fight the gulf oil spill. They say people are overnighting human and pet hair from all over the world and that it will really help.

Is this just internet rumormongering, or is this a real and efficient response?

Are booms made from human and animal hair a practical means of containing/cleaning up oil spills? And is mailing/shipping a wad of dog hair from your Furminator going to be useful in creating such booms? Sounds too labor-intensive to be true.

I didn’t find anything on Snopes in a brief perusal. You might be able to Google the site from what I’ve said here, but in case it’s just a plea for attention, I didn’t want to post the link.

2

At least with some parts of the country and some breeds of dog, this is the time of year when people will sometimes shave off the winter fur entirely (or at least the stomach) to get the critters ready for summer. (And prevent all that hair from being shed in the house). So it might be much more than a wad or two that’s available to some people.

As far as the claim goes… hair will soak up oil, and I have heard this mentioned in the news. Can’t speak to whether hair is the best solution (probably not, but it might be cheaper), and I don’t know whether any particular organization is really doing this.

3

I have a bunch of Lab hair I’m willing to ship over. No problem collecting it. I usually vacuum up enough of it that I could clone another dog or two.