On November 1, 1986, a shocking incident occurred on the Rhine River. A warehouse fire in Basel, Switzerland—the river’s uppermost city—turned the Rhine, a vital lifeline for 60 million people and the heart of European industry, into a “river of death” overnight. The fire broke out in a raw material storage facility owned by Sandoz, a Swiss multinational company that manufactures and sells pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and pesticides. The warehouse held about 1,300 tons of 90 different chemicals, most of which were highly toxic pesticides, disinfectants, and fuels, as well as 1.9 tons of poisonous heavy metal mercury.