After a cyanide spill blighted a major Hungarian river last month, scientists and officials are scrambling to come up with ideas for warding off future disasters. On the night of 30 January, a dike holding millions of gallons of cyanide-laced waste water gave way at a gold-extraction operation in northwestern Romania, sending a deadly waterborne plume across the Hungarian border and down the nation's second largest river. As Hungarians watched in horror, some 200 tons of dead fish floated to the surface of the blighted waters or washed up on the Tisza River's banks. Fish were only the most visible victims. The toxic brew also killed legions of microbes and threatened endangered otters and eagles that ate the tainted fish.
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