Jailbirds shed hair to help clean up Philippine oil spill

Manila - Prisoners in the Philippines have been shaving their heads in order to donate their hair to the effort to clean up the country's worst oil spill, jail officials have said.

Hair from prisoners at the national penitentiary will be used to mop up oil from Solar 1, a tanker that went down off the central island of Guimaras earlier this month, said jail superintendent Juanito Leopando.

Some 50,000 gallons of oil has leaked from the ship, causing an oil slick that has damaged fragile marine ecosystems, including coral, mangroves and fishing grounds.

Officials have called for hair, feathers and hay to be used to mop up the spilled oil which has crippled the tourism and fishing industries in Guimaras.

The prisoners were voluntarily donating their hair and were happy to join the effort to clean up the country's worst environmental disaster, Leopando said.

Some 16,000 of the 19,000 prisoners in the jail were expected to have their heads shaved and authorities would send someone to pick up the accumulated hair by Friday, he said.

Island residents have been forced to use hand tools to scoop up the black globs of oil and to construct improvised oil spill booms, made of bamboo and straw, to try to minimize the amount of oil hitting their beaches. -- Agence France Presse

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