A massive cloud of black dust that swept across the Detroit River into Windsor, Canada this week has been linked to piles of petroleum coke, a by-product of tar sands oil illegally stored in Detroit by Koch Carbon.
Though much has already been said of the tar sands oil industry, which is currently experiencing a boom and has spurred several high profile pipeline expansions across the US, the accumulation of the petroleum coke, commonly referred to as pet coke, along the Detroit riverfront went largely unnoticed until this week.
A dust cloud which flew over Detroit and into Windsor this week was found to carry elevated traces of lead, sulfur, zinc and vanadium, which is possibly cancer-causing in humans in prolonged or elevated exposure, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a France-based organization. The US Department of Health and Human Services and the US has not yet classified whether vanadium is carcinogenic.
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