During the 1970s, violent binge drinking on the Grassy Narrows reserve killed dozens of Ojibwa Indians. The reason? Mercury from a paper mill had poisoned their river and fishing had been banned. Their society collapsed. What price environmental protection? Maybe the mercury would have been a lesser poison. Their story comes from Kai Erikson’s A New Species of Trouble: The Human Experience of Modern Disaster (W.W. Norton, £8.95, ISBN 0393 313 190). From Love Canal to Three Mile Island to Grassy Narrows, Erikson says, the poison is just the beginning.
More from ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ
Explore the latest news, articles and features
Popular articles
Trending ¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ articles
1
The best new science-fiction books of June 2026
2
Glaciers in the 'roof of the world' have suddenly started melting
3
Mathematical AI helps researchers crack 50-year-old problem
4
Pancreatic cancer halted by virus injection in three patients
5
Q-Day could destroy bitcoin – and our retirement savings
6
How a radical new view of life could reveal its origin – and aliens
7
Can we harness quantum effects to create a new kind of healthcare?
8
Start-ups are racing to revolutionise mathematics with AI
9
Does gravity create reality? A shocking path to a theory of everything
10
Earliest use of anaesthetics uncovered in Chinese doctor’s tomb
