Video by Charles Trainor Jr./Miami Herald Staff

According to the Miami Herald, “Villagers in the Dominican Republic claim children have been born without limbs and organs. And, they are blaming the abnormalities on rock ash dumped by a Virginia coal company.” More from MiamiHerald.com:

A civil lawsuit filed Wednesday in Delaware charges that toxic levels of waste dumped at the Arroyo Barril port has made people nearby sick. After years of repeated miscarriages, women whose blood levels show abnormal levels of arsenic are giving birth to babies with cranial deformities, with organs outside their bodies or missing limbs.

The case highlights the debate over coal ash, an unregulated byproduct of coal energy, which when processed and recycled is used in everything from cement to the foundation for golf courses. Popular Mechanics magazine this month calls a concrete made from coal ash one of the “10 Most Brilliant Products of 2009.”

The ash, a concentrated form of naturally occurring contaminants, is what is left over from burning coal for power. It usually contains arsenic, lead, cadmium, chromium and nickel. But as towns in Tennessee and Maryland clean up massive spills of the substance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is poised to rule on whether it should be classified as hazardous — which would be a tremendous blow to influential power companies that have long lobbied against such a classification.

What is fly ash?

Fly ash is a residue produced when coal is burned, and this residue can pose environmental and health risks. Courts have determined that fly ash can be considered a hazardous waste under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, also known as Superfund) if the fly ash contained one of the listed hazardous wastes under CERCLA (Reference: 118 A.L.R. Fed. 293 and United States v. Conservation Chem. Co., 1985). However, under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), EPA considers fly ash a special waste, utility waste or fossil fuel combustion (FFC) waste, which “have been exempted from federal hazardous waste regulations under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).”

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