deliver a bifurcated message like that. it did seriously undermine people s confidence in government, because it s all been lumped together and said, you said the air was safe to breathe and people are dying. people who rescued on the pile i believe absolutely are having health effects from having breathed that air, but we always told them, epa told them, every day in meetings and the rest of it, they should wear respirators. there s a distinction. there s a distinction, which is hard to make. i don t know the gulf. i haven t been part of epa s testing of the waters and testeditested ing of the food supply. you have to look over time and what it does to the sea life and the ecology over time and then how that affects humans. antonia there is no question. you look at antonia s piece and i have to think it s important, and we need to know what she s saying, and it needs to be out
antonia juhasz author of black tide. thanks so much for your time this morning. really, really important reporting. thank you for having me. president obama says he wasn t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. mitt romney gets offended. we ll explain why, right after this. [ female announcer ] experience dual-action power, with listerine® whitening plus restoring rinse. it s the only listerine® that gets teeth two shades whiter and makes tooth enamel two times stronger. get dual-action listerine® whitening rinse. building whiter, stronger teeth.
of this type of exposure, and people in the gulf are experiencing them, and i honestly think based on my studies that 200,000 fig sir probably small. again, remember, 21 million people live on the gulf coast. they were exposed to an unprecedented environmental disaster. they re going to suffer the human consequences. antonia, one of the things that s confusing about this, a bunch of parallel prausz processes in place. based on different kinds of classes. health effects disaggregated from economic effects. there is the natural resources, damage assessment, happeningeneder the oil spill act you mentioned. that s coming up with a tally. the money bp put up front and then, of course, also fines under the clean water act. so there s a bunch of different processes that are happening, and all of those are going to continue to play out and we should keep checking back in so we don t just forget about the gulf.
borrow and bob herbert from the think tank. thank in absentia, christine todd whitman. did not get to thank her in person for joining us. and antonia juhasz from new orleans who s writing a book about the oil spill and just talking about trust, whether you were trust pronouncements. the proclamation of the air safe after 9/11 when christine todd whitman was head of the epa. found that misleading. is there a gap between what the government and bp and what people are experiencing? absolutely. i just want to say in response to secretary whitman s last statement, what s very important to understand about the gulf of mexico right now and this oil spill is that it covers five beautiful states. on every given day, therqku a beautiful beach in the gulf of
levon helm who we lost this week here on this saturday morning. i want to bring in antonio juhasz from new orleans, author of black tie: the devastating impact ofç the gulf oil spill. welcome. thanks for having me. you wrote a great piece in the nation this week about what the gulf is like two years later. for people that haven t been paying attention to the story, now coming back to it. you ve been spending the last few years on it. what has been overlooked? what should they know? what do people feel like in the gulf about the effects of this? this is an ongoing tragedy, the most important thing. remember it began with the death of 11 men on the deepwater horizon. the beginning of what unleashed what, if it wasn t for saddam