Toxic Flood Lifts Lid On Common Urban Pollution Problem

20th Sep 2005, 20:18 GMT

Broken sewers, flooded industrial plants and dead bodies are all likely to blame for poisoning the waters being drained from New Orleans. But the water -- and the muck it is leaving behind -- also owes its contamination to a source as mundane as it is unexpected: Toxins common in most urban environments that made their way en masse into the water as it stagnated atop the city.