Smoke on the water

From Steve Orchard I read your article on the impact on health of the recent floods in Bristol, UK (22 February, p 7), and was reminded of a day in 1968 friends and acquaintances, yet  we all felt this action was barbaric and morally repugnant. Many zoos, for example, were publicly critical at the seeming lack of compassion. Marius’s subsequent public butchering was little short of an obscenity given the outcry about his death. It would be nice if you got off what I am beginning to see as your high horse (giraffe?) and became more aligned to what I suspect are the opinions of your readers.  that no one who lived or worked  in the city will forget. I was working in Bedminster, in one  of the low-lying areas. It rained  so much in one day that by the following morning, the place where I usually parked my motorbike was a metre deep in water. All around that area were the cigarette and cigar factories of Imperial Tobacco. As the previous day’s output was so contaminated by either rainwater or foul water, it was condemned and disposed  of at the local tip. Subsequently, as TV news footage at the time showed, scores of people invaded the tip intent on picking up as many cigarettes as they could, often coming to blows. The council quickly had to organise large bulldozers to bury the cigarettes deep in the tip. Perhaps the use of contaminated tobacco products contributed to the level of ill health identified in the study. North Nibley, Gloucestershire.