Sandoz chemical spill

The Sandoz chemical spill was a major environmental disaster caused by a fire and its subsequent extinguishing at Sandoz agrochemical storehouse in Schweizerhalle, Basel-Landschaft, Switzerland, on November 1, 1986, which released toxic agrochemicals into the air and resulted in tons of pollutants entering the Rhine river, turning it red. The chemicals caused a massive mortality of wildlife downstream, killing among other things a large proportion of the European eel population in the Rhine,^[2] although the situation subsequently recovered within a couple of years.^[3] The stored chemicals included, beside urea and fluorescent dye, organophosphate insecticides, mercury compounds and organochlorines.^[4] Among the major resulting water pollutants were dinitro-ortho-cresol, the organophosphate chemicals propetamphos, parathion, disulfoton, thiometon, etrimphos and fenitrothion, as well as the organochlorine metoxuron.^[5]

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandoz chemical spill