Word: songhua
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...didn't say anything about water. Indeed, neither the company nor government officials mentioned the facility's tanks of benzene, nitrobenzene and a related chemical called aniline, located near the banks of the Songhua River. The blast ruptured the tanks, dumping 100 tons of those chemicals into the river. "If there was a leak of the tanks," says an executive of a foreign chemical company who was briefed by officials in Beijing on the events at Jilin, "it would be an emergency. But this was a flood...
...Within hours, a toxic slick that grew to 80 km long had started to float down the Songhua. Jilin officials opened a reservoir to dilute the contaminants and instructed factories to avoid using river water. They also notified the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) in Beijing, which coordinated the response. SEPA has issued conflicting statements about its subsequent actions. In a Nov. 24 statement it said that it "quickly" sent an expert team to Jilin and neighboring Heilongjiang province, which lies downstream. But in the same statement, SEPA said that Jilin officials didn't notify their counterparts in Heilongjiang until...
...Downriver from the plant by 350 km lies China's eighth-largest city, Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang. Most of the surrounding province draws its drinking water from wells; in contrast, Harbin's downtown population of 3.5 million gets 90% of its water directly from the Songhua. As the slick approached, Harbin's officials announced on Nov. 21 that they would shut off the city's water for reasons of pipe maintenance. "There was no way the people were going believe that," says Xu Shijian, a 77-year-old retired Communist Party official. Like most residents, Xu stocked...
...explosives, fungicides, dyes and shoe polish, are nasty substances to have in a river. Benzene and nitrobenzene can affect the nervous system, and long-term exposure to benzene can cause cancer and chromosomal aberrations. With luck, the problem will simply drift downriver and dissipate without doing much harm. The Songhua eventually flows across the Russian border, joining the Amur River and emptying into the Sea of Okhotsk near Vladivostok. China waited at least a week after the explosion to notify Russia about the toxins. The two countries are now conferring, but Russian politicians have complained. Viktor Shudegov, Chairman...
...even if the main body of the slick disperses into the sea, the danger may not be over. Experts such as Chan King-ming, an associate professor of biochemistry at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, say the chemicals may seep into the banks of the Songhua and even into the area's groundwater, which could contaminate wells. And the river has started to freeze: the chemicals could be trapped in the ice until spring. "They'll need a long-term monitoring program, from this November until next summer," says Chan...