mind couldn t be further from reality. now that they ve just return from this ten-day mission out in the gulf waters to study the oil spill, they say for the first time they re finding toxicity levels in the water affecting crucial marine organisms. this is the weather bird 2, a research vessel used by the university of south florida for the last ten days. investigating the oil spill. some 13 scientists have been on-board and they re just now coming home to st. petersburg. water in here has been was collected from 50 meters. reporter: david was one of the lead researchers on the mission. did you feel like you were kind of on the verge of really getting a better understanding of what s going on underneath the water? i think we re adding to the puzzle. we re adding to the pieces of the puzzle. reporter: hollander and another expert on the journey sat down with us for their
testing done before they were used. obviously this is a difficult decision. are you talking about oil which is highly toxic in the environment. epa looked at this issue. a decision was made to use dispersants. then a decision was made to dramatically reduce the amount of dispersants being used. a 72% reduction. we re going to continue to monitor, continue to test. right now there s no anomalies. toxicity levels are not above what you might normally see in the gulf but we need to remain vij leapt and we will. is the seafood safe to eat? we ve been opening fisheries. they go through rigorous testing before they are reopened. we ll continue that testing. i m going to 234r0rd latflorida today. i look forward to eating florida seafood. i think the public can eat sea fo food with confidence because we only reopen these fisheries after extensive testing with the fish. we re delighted to see the light at the end of the tunnel with this natural disaster. carol browning, thank you. . a b
paul of kentucky also getting reminded of his support for bp at his first debate last night with democratic challenger jack conway. perhaps most telling was an interview with a republican no longer in power, johnny burton. for five years head of president bush s mms. the agency that oversaw drilling. burton the former owner of an oil company telling the wyoming star tribune, quote, when i was there it worked well. her successor also part of dick cheney s wyoming republican circle and once cheney s intern refused to comment. he is now president of the trade group representing offshore drillers. let s turn first to the executive director of the louisiana environmental action network, part of the coalition behind bp makes me sick.com. thanks again for your time tonight. oh, keith, it s an honor to be here. thank you so much. a pleasure to share with you. your reaction to this report from green wire concerning the toxicity levels that bp is itself reporting among cleanup workers? kei
the smell out here is so strong right now. i mean, i don t know anything about toxicity levels and air quality and this kind of stuff. but i were in a place on land where it smelled this strong, i would my instinct would be to get away and get to fresh air. when you re out on this much open water and this isn t fresh air, it s scary. right there is ft. livingston. that marks essentially the start of the gulf. and right now you can see we re in a mess of oil. all of these little globs, these dark brown globs, smaller than the globs we saw yesterday, but much more widespread. these aren t individual pieces, we re in a whole lot of sheen and in an area where the oil is just coagulating a lot of different pieces of it. there s a lot of action out here right now. you can see some of that heavy
there you hear mine safety officials and joe mancion with the details. they re going to have to enter the upper big branch mine. the issue are the toxicity levels. they determined they are at safe enough levels that 16 rescue crew members are going to reenter this mine. they re still calling this a rescue effort. that s a good word. that gives some of the family members hope that the four missing miners are possibly still alive. the rescue members are going to be equipped with breathing apparatuses should there be any survivors. they will be able to offer them some kind of refuge so they ll be able to get back to the surface. there are these rescue chambers that we ve been talking about that the miners, had they been