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The operation is being sold to Farepak

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The operation is being sold to Farepak. Investment Column, page 18. In political terms, Sir Richard Greenbury has played an impossible hand more adroitly than anybody expected him to a few months ago, when Michael Heseltine, then President of the Board of Trade, encouraged the Confederation of British Industry to set up the committee on executive pay. Most of it was contained within a protective wall which surrounds the chemical tanks, but about 500 litres (110 gallons) escaped - Chemaide's managing director, John Bell, estimated - and some drained into the Knockhatch stream which passes through the industrial estate.Some of the acid evaporated, forming a vapour cloud above the premises. Police advised people living near by to stay indoors and keep their doors and windows shut.About 70 firemen attended through the night wearing breathing apparatus to protect them from the corrosive fumes.

They pumped water on to the surrounding ground to dilute the acid. The Government's National Rivers Authority created a dam made of lime-filled sacks across the 6ft wide stream in an effort to neutralise the acid. Upstream of the dam, however, the water was acidic enough to kill and dissolve life.The authority appeared to have succeeded in preventing any significant pollution reaching the Cuckmere, a trout stream which the Knockhatch joins half a mile away.''The lime dam will have to stay in place for a couple of days until the acid is neutralised and the pH of the water drops to more normal levels,'' said a spokesman. ''As long as we don't have a downpour of rain overnight, which would cause the dam to be breached, the situation now looks to be contained."Mr Bell would not comment on what caused the leakage, but said the Government's Health and Safety Executive was investigating.

''The spillage appears to be much less severe than was first feared,'' he said.Most of the spilt acid was pumped into a tanker lorry and driven away for disposal.. STEVE CONNOR Science Correspondent A combination of pollution and disease is killing thousands of frogs in an epidemic that is sweeping the country, scientists said yesterday.Dozens of reports are flooding in to the national Frog Mortality Project of deaths from a lingering illness that may be caused by new frog viruses identified by scientists at the Central Veterinary Laboratory and the Institute of Zoology in London.Tom Langton, who helps run the project set up in 1992 to establish why amphibians appear to be dying out, said his switchboard has been ''swamped'' in the past week with sightings of mass deaths. ''Every year there appears to be a slight rise in frog mortality This week is particularly bad. We have a disasterous frog epidemic going on."Scientists studying dead frogs have identified a virus that might be partly responsible.

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