Upstream from the Sydney tar ponds, and the root of all it's problems over the past eighty years, is a 51 acre coke oven plant, steel plant and an industrial dump, The coke oven was home to a coal refinery which turned coal in to useful substances such as benzene, toluene, kerosene, naphthalene, and tar. Although the plant is now abandoned, these hazardous substances remain. Under the plant is 160 kilometers of busted pipes containing the "deadliest chemicals known to scientists" which regularly send flames through the poisonous soil that covers them to the outer world. Next to the coke oven is the steel plant which used byproducts of the coke ovens to produce steel for railways rails and such. Between the steel plant and the tar ponds is an area known as the "high dump," home to industrial wastes for over a hundred years, sadly dumping is still being done here. When it rains, florescent green puddles are seen spewing from the 76 meter high trash pile, amid the trash is an incinerator that spews mercury from it's stacks and a bright yellow pile of pure sulfur lies next to all this.
             Some chemical reactions of Coke ovens Some chemical reactions of the Steel Plant
             C6H12O6 C6H6 + H20 + CO2 (Benzene) C (coke) + O2 (air) -> CO2
             C6H12O6 C7H8 + H20+CO2(Toluene) CO2 + C (excess coke) -> 2CO
             C6H12O6 C11H24 + H20+CO2(Kerosene) Fe2O3 (ore) + 3C (coke) -> 2Fe + 3CO
             C6H12O6 C10H8 +H20+CO2 (Naphthalene) Fe2O3 + 3CO -> 2Fe + 3CO2
             Arsenic Trioxide: AsIII2O3 Sodium arsenate: Na2H AsVO4 Arsenic Acid: AsH3VO4
             The soil surrounding the Sydney Tar Ponds is contaminated with such extremely hazardous and cancer causing chemicals. Contaminants are substances, such as the hydrocarbons listed above as well as other toxic substances, "toxins," that make the area dangerous. "Estimated 700,000 tons of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polychlorinated biphenyls filling
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