On '60 Minutes' | 10/02/2009 5:30 am

On '60 Minutes' With Lesley Stahl: How Safe Is Coal Ash? (Video)

Lesley Stahl is back with her weekly sneak preview of "60 Minutes" on wowOwow. This week’s story is about muck, sludge, gunk … or coal ash, the byproduct of burning coal. Much of this material is being used as filler for kitchen countertops, carpeting, underneath roads – but just how toxic is it? There’s no data right now that proves the material is safe. Coal ash contains the metals mercury, arsenic and lead; still, it is not yet regulated by the EPA. And last year, a billion gallons of muck containing coal ash flooded the town of Kingston, TN, in a spill 100 times larger than the notorious Exxon-Valdez spill. This Sunday on "60 Minutes," Lesley will talk to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and try to answer the question: How safe is coal ash?

Get the Flash Player to view this video.

Also on Sunday, Steve Kroft will talk to Ponzi-schemer Marc Dreier.

"60 Minutes" airs on CBS Sunday at 7 PM ET/PT.

16 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

It’s highly toxic. You don’t want to live a or be any where near this crap.

By F P on 10/02/2009 3:31 pm

e-mail alert

And yet… it’s in kitchen counters?? Ewww. Guess this is something that needs to be looked at!

By Lila Kuh on 10/02/2009 3:44 pm

e-mail alert

And rugs in schools—the spokesman for the coal industry was certainly a major weasel if I ever saw one and the EPA spokeswoman wasn’t much better. The high levels of aresenic and selenium alone would suggest to anyone with a brain that this stuff is dangerous.

By F P on 10/05/2009 5:49 am

e-mail alert

Geez, could THIS be a cause of our skyrocketing rates of ADD, autism, and the like?

By Lila Kuh on 10/05/2009 2:16 pm

e-mail alert

Think about this for a moment——how many people have to die or get cancer, or have their nervous systems compromised, or suffer thru miscarriages, and how many children have to be born fine, then turn out to have autism after their first shots? How many toxic poisons does it take to cause these anomolies and more—-before ‘common sense’ steps up and punches the face of denial?

Oh! Forgot! Common Sense doesn’t make a lot of money…I guess it won;t have the power to overcome what really controls thought and action…MONEY!

By Patty E on 10/02/2009 4:03 pm

e-mail alert

Oh, I so agree Patty!

By Chrissy Smith on 10/04/2009 11:13 am

e-mail alert

Patty: there is no evidence whatsoever medically that vaccines cause autism. We need to look more and deeper at environmental issues re autism. A new report states that 1 in 100 newborns have autism in this country that’s up form 1 in 150 a few years back. If you’ve ever heard of epi-genomes you might want to investigate this in relation to autism.

By F P on 10/05/2009 9:58 am

e-mail alert

People will always die anyway. It’s more important that business makes as much money as they can, so as to make our lives better.

By albert miller on 10/02/2009 4:47 pm

e-mail alert

Death is inevitable. But poisoning the environment in order to make $$$ is more important than the quality of life??? You must be saying this tongue in cheek.

By Sharon McBride on 10/03/2009 12:15 am

e-mail alert

Coal contains trace amounts of radioactive elements not harmful when the coal is whole. However once the coal has been burned these elements become concentrated and highly toxic. The fly ash leaches into the surrounding soil and water. In small quantities this might not matter but in coal burning power plants or other coal burning industries this means mountains of waste that could be powerful future contaminants.

By Chris Glass` on 10/02/2009 5:03 pm

e-mail alert

I never miss 60 Minutes and am looking forward to this story. I think it is terrible, that coal ash would be used in so many ways, without even a study first. The greed of corporations never ceases to amaze me, not a concern about people or the planet, it is all about the money.

By Mel Berg on 10/03/2009 6:31 am

e-mail alert

I’ve just been reading more "outrage" over vaccines and why people are becoming more distrustful of them. Many of the intelligencia seem to think this is outright ignorance, lauding vaccine developers and producers for the many millions they have saved from disease and death. They, the few, don’t seem to get that we, the many, are bombarded all too often with announcements that something we trusted not to harm us in fact does. My take on this is: If capitalism cannot be integrated with democracy more successfully than we’ve been able to do so far, we better rethink the whole thing imo. At the risk of stating the obvious, the profit motive cannot and should not be the be all and end all for every good gd thing.

By rocky rocky on 10/03/2009 1:14 pm

e-mail alert

Just watched Ms Stahl on 60 Minutes. Great report. Thank you! Coal ash = reason enough isn’t it to get moving on clean energy? No environmental hazards I’ve heard of involved with solar panels and wind turbines and geothermal heating and cooling systems … If everyone demanded it, prices would come down so that everyone can have ‘em. CLEAN energy, folks. Let’s get with it already!

By rocky rocky on 10/04/2009 6:42 pm

e-mail alert

Every artificial energy system utilized by man has drawbacks, if not in the actual energy collection or generation then in the manufacture of equipment needed or extraction of material used.

The only true way to "go green" is to stop using so much energy. A while back analysis showed that if all of California just turned off their computers when not in use they would have saved enough energy to decommision a power plant. It’s probably more than that now.

By Karen R on 10/04/2009 10:32 pm

e-mail alert

Holey mackeral, we’d save that much? It’s our little everyday habits that add up, I guess. And, yes, you are correct about everything manufactured leaving a footprint. A little hyperbole on my part … Still, it seems out and out irresponsible that we blatantly continue this eons old habit of using fossil fuels when alternatives are within our reach. I hope our leadership—local, state, and national—helps us move toward cleaner practices as quickly as possible.

By rocky rocky on 10/05/2009 7:05 am