The massive coal ash spill in East Tennessee is laced with unhealthy amounts of arsenic, antimony, lead and a brew of other toxic materials and heavy metals, tests show. The Environmental Protection Agency has released results from the first round of tests on the sludge that spilled across 300 acres of Roane County on Dec. 22. The ash that burst out of a retaining pit at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston coal-fired plant spilled five decades' worth of coal dust and chemicals into homes, yards and the local ecosystem.

Long-term exposure is precisely what worries the plant's neighbors and environmentalists trying to calculate the damage the spill could do to fish and local wildlife. At other sites, long-term exposure to coal ash runoff has had devastating effects on local fish stocks. Young fish were born with eyes that had shifted to one side of their heads, or spines twisted into "s" shapes. "If you were to drink that water, you'd be in trouble," said Shea Tuberty, associate professor of biology at Appalachian State University, who ran independent tests on the water and ash with similar results -- arsenic levels 30 times or higher than the safety standard. Tests on the sludge itself - the accumulated ash of coal fires at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant -- showed unsafe levels of arsenic and vanadium and higher-than-normal levels of almost every other chemical and heavy metal found in coal: mercury, magnesium, selenium, sodium, cobalt and manganese.

Learn more about the Kingston coal ash spill and the legal rights of those affected by the spill.