The World - News from Dec. 15, 1986
About 40,000 demonstrators gathered in Basel, Switzerland, and dozens of other communities along the banks of the Rhine River to protest pollution of the waterway, protest organizers said. About 15,000 people formed a human chain between Basel and Neuenburg in West Germany, they said. In Bonn, hundreds of protesters linked arms to form a human chain that stretched across two bridges spanning the river. More than 10 tons of toxic chemicals were washed into the Rhine on Nov. 1 when firefighters fought a blaze at a warehouse of the Sandoz chemical company near Basel. Environmentalists said the spill set back efforts to clean up the Rhine by 10 years.
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