Credit: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania State Archives
The roasting of bituminous coal in Pennsylvania's bee hive coke ovens, more than 46,000 of which were operation in the 1910s, poured huge clouds of toxic smoke into the air, twenty-four hours a day, and 365 days a year. The chemical cocktail of ammonia, tar, phenols, benzene, lead, sulfur dioxide and more than a thousand chemical compounds poisoned the surrounding landscape and caused untold illnesses among coke workers and residents of Pennsylvania coal country.
