clipped from: news.independent.co.uk It sounds like the plot of a blockbuster film, but according to scientists, tens of thousands of people in this country face the threat of being poisoned by lethal gas - from volcanoes 600 miles away in Iceland.
Research by a British academic has demonstrated how a volcanic gas cloud emanating from an Icelandic volcano killed 30,000 Britons in a hitherto little-studied environmental disaster two centuries ago.
"People died in such vast numbers because the volcanic cloud exacerbated their respiratory illnesses," said Dr John Grattan, a senior lecturer at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, who has been studying the impact on Britain of the eruption of Iceland's Laki volcano in 1783.
"A similar eruption today would kill up to 100,000 people in this country because we now have a much larger population and a much bigger percentage of it is elderly and therefore more vulnerable," said Dr Grattan.