A local wearing protective clothes and mask cleans the toxic sludge which has covered streets and residential properties. The toxic Hungarian sludge flood was caused by the rupture of a red sludge reservoir at an alumina plant in western Hungary and has affected seven towns near Ajkai, 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Budapest. This sludge, to date responsible for six missing people and 120 injured, is highly toxic and contains a mixture of heavy metals.