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Reporters fanned out all over the coastal ecosystem and brought back uniformly bad news. ABC's Ryan Owens traveled to the white sands of the Florida Panhandle where the local tourism industry is using BP's money to run an advertising campaign to persuade tourists not to stay away. The Gulf Coast is Open for Business & for Fun. Owens demonstrated that even clear-looking water can still stink from the petroleum sheen. NBC's Ron Mott gave Pensacola a day or two before it starts to be slimed.
NBC anchor Brian Williams took a boat into the coastal marshes to check out a rookery for roseate spoonbills: "The edge of the vegetation at the water line is already dead," he showed us. "It has gone gray. It was hit by oil nine days ago." And out in the Gulf itself, ten miles off shore, CBS' Mark Strassmann was astonished at the volume of crude: "This is so heavy I can barely lift it…That was a solid sheet of oil the consistency of cake mix."
Back on shore CBS' Strassmann told us "the overwhelming impression was the smell. I mean, I have a fairly strong stomach. I felt queasy for 45 minutes after we left the water." NBC turned to Nancy Snyderman, its in-house physician, who offered this scary scenario: "Crude oil can affect every organ in the body. When it comes in close contact with the skin, it can cause burns or blistering. Within seconds of being inhaled, it hits the brain, causing dizziness and headaches. In the lungs, people can experience shortness of breath and wheezing, which forces the heart to pump harder. From the lungs, it passes into the bloodstream, where it targets the liver and kidneys."
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