Exxon Valdez oil spill After 20 years, there is no evidence suggesting that either cleanup workers or the residents of the communities affected by the Valdez spill have had any adverse health effects as a result of the spill or its cleanup. In 1992, Exxon released a video titled "Scientists and the Alaska Oil Spill", to be distributed to schools. Dr. Michael Fry called it a piece of "corporate propaganda". In December 1994, the Unabomber assassinated Burson-Marsteller executive Thomas Mosser, accusing him of having "helped Exxon clean up its public image after the "Exxon Valdez" incident". The PR company claimed not to have been
1969 Santa Barbara oil spill which devastated coastal areas in both England and France, and the burning of the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. At the time, the Santa Barbara spill was the largest oil spill ever in U.S. waters, and its occurrence during a fierce battle between local residents and the very oil company responsible for the spill only made the controversy more intense, the battle more public, and the anti-oil cause seem more valid to a wider segment of the populace. In the several years after the spill, more environmental legislation was passed than in any other similar period in U.S. history.