Giant Toxic Coal Ash Spill Threatens Animals Kelly Hearn in
Kingston, Tennessee for National Geographic News |January 23,
2009| It's been called the Exxon Valdez of coal ash—a wakeup
call for a fossil fuel industry. But the recent toxic ash spill
in Tennessee is greater in scope than the 1989 oil spill, and
despite what some conservationists are calling very real
threats, the ash disaster has so far inspired apparently little
concern for local wildlife. On December 22 a billion gallons of
poisonous sludge—largely coal ash, a byproduct of coal
burning—broke through an earthen dike at the Kingston Fossil
Plant. The torrent half-buried area homes and elevated long-
running health concerns over heavy metals in the ash. Those
worries, experts say, are not limited to human health. In
addition to the animals killed by the initial spill, wildlife
may be threatened for years by the trace amounts of arsenic,
cadmium, mercury, thallium, and other toxins in the coal ash.
(Related: "Heavy Metal-Eating 'Superworms' Unearthe