Toxic Slick Reaches Chinese City
A slick of river-borne toxins from a chemical plant explosion flowed into a major Chinese city Thursday as the government dug wells after shutting down its water system to protect millions of residents from the pollution.
Reporters from China’s usually docile state press peppered Zhang Lijun with questions, asking repeatedly why the government waited so long to disclose the scale of the threat faced by Harbin and other communities.
The government did not publicly confirm that the Songhua River had been poisoned with benzene until Wednesday, 10 days after the explosion, which killed five people. But Zhang said local officials and companies were told as soon as the spill was detected and stopped using river water.
The 50-mile-long stretch of water carrying toxic benzene started flowing through Harbin, a northeastern city of 3.8 million people, at about 3 a.m. local time, the government said. It was expected to take 40 hours to pass. From there it will take about two weeks before it reaches Russia.
The chemical plant, located about 120 miles southeast of Harbin, is operated by a subsidiary of China’s biggest oil company, state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. Benzene is used in the manufacture of plastics, detergents and pesticides.
The tip-off was a trail of dead fish in the Songhua River, the official China Daily newspaper reported Thursday. It said a monitoring station found on Nov. 20 that benzene and nitrobenzene levels were far above state standards — with nitrobenzene at one point 103.6 times higher than normal.
Source: MSNBC.
The Peking Duck has a great run-down of the problem, and some interesting links for you to read, including this interview with Minister Pan Yue of the ministry of the environment.
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