The Sandoz chemical spill was a major

environmental disaster An environmental disaster or ecological disaster is defined as a catastrophic event regarding the natural environment that is due to human activity.Jared M. Diamond, '' Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed'', 2005 This point distingu ...

caused by a fire and its subsequent extinguishing at

Sandoz Sandoz Group AG is a Swiss company that focuses on generic pharmaceuticals and biosimilars. Prior to October 2023, it was part of a division of Novartis that was established in 2003, when Novartis united all of its generics businesses under the ...

agrochemical storehouse in the Schweizerhalle industrial complex,

Basel-Landschaft Canton of Basel-Landschaft or Basel-Country, informally known as Baselland or Baselbiet (; ; ; ; ), is one of the 26 cantons forming the Swiss Confederation. It is composed of five districts and its capital city is Liestal. It is traditional ...

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, on 1 November 1986, which released toxic agrochemicals into the air and resulted in tons of pollutants entering the

Rhine river The Rhine ( ) is one of the major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Swiss-Austrian border. From Lake Cons ...

, turning it red. The chemicals caused a massive mortality of wildlife downstream, killing, among other animals, a large proportion of the

European eel The European eel (''Anguilla anguilla'') is a species of eel. Their life history was a mystery for thousands of years, and mating in the wild has not yet been observed. The five stages of their development were originally thought to be differe ...

population in the Rhine, although the situation subsequently recovered within a couple of years. Among the major resulting water pollutants were dinitro-ortho-cresol, the

organophosphate In organic chemistry, organophosphates (also known as phosphate esters, or OPEs) are a class of organophosphorus compounds with the general structure , a central phosphate molecule with alkyl or aromatic substituents. They can be considered ...

chemicals propetamphos,

parathion Parathion, also called parathion-ethyl or diethyl parathion, is an organophosphate insecticide and acaricide. It was originally developed by IG Farben in the 1940s. It is highly toxic to non-target organisms, including humans, so its use has been ...

, disulfoton, thiometon, etrimphos and

fenitrothion Fenitrothion (IUPAC name: ''O'',''O''-dimethyl ''O''-(3-methyl-4-nitrophenyl) phosphorothioate) is a phosphorothioate (organophosphate) insecticide that is inexpensive and widely used worldwide. Trade names include ''Sumithion'', a 94.2% solutio ...

, as well as the organochlorine metoxuron. The cause of the blaze was never established. In 2000, Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior U.S. intelligence official, stated that the Soviet

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

had ordered the East German

Stasi The Ministry for State Security (, ; abbreviated MfS), commonly known as the (, an abbreviation of ), was the Intelligence agency, state security service and secret police of East Germany from 1950 to 1990. It was one of the most repressive pol ...

to sabotage the chemical factory. According to him, the operation's objective was to distract attention from the

Chernobyl disaster On 26 April 1986, the no. 4 reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near Pripyat, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union (now Ukraine), exploded. With dozens of direct casualties, it is one of only ...

six months earlier in the Soviet Union.Stasi accused of Swiss disaster
The Irish Times. Nov 23, 2000. The Swiss authorities were considering opening investigations again.
Swiss info. No evidence of this presumed sabotage has ever surfaced. As a consequence of the incident Sandoz extended its health, safety and environment activities and introduced new procedures for risk and emergency management, including auditing.Website of doCOUNT Ltd.
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Notes and references

See also