Panic spreads through city

2005-11-23 12:35

Beijing - An explosion at a chemical plant in northeastern China 10 days ago caused contamination in a major river more than 100 times above national safety levels, environmental authorities said on Wednesday.

"After the blast at the chemical plant the monitoring station in Jilin found that benzene went into the river and polluted the water," China's Environmental Protection Administration said in a statement on its website.

"Benzene levels were 108 times above national safety levels."

It was referring to a November 13 explosion at the PetroChina petrochemical plant along the banks of the Songhua river in Jilin province.

Potentially lethal

Water supplies to Harbin, the capital of neighbouring Heilongjiang province about 380km downstream from the blast site, were cut off at midnight on Tuesday over pollution fears.

The announcement of the shutdown in Harbin in China's northeast set off panicked buying this week of bottled water, milk and soft drinks that left supermarket shelves bare.

The water system will stay out of service for four days, said an official of its Municipal Water Supply Group.

Officials said an explosion on November 13 at a chemical plant in the nearby city of Jilin left the Songhua River, Harbin's main source of drinking water, polluted with benzene.

"The provincial government is sending in bottled drinking water from other cities," Chen said. "It must be very inconvenient for the public - taking showers or flushing toilets. "

The explosion in Jilin killed five people and forced the evacuation of 10 000 others. It was blamed on human error in a tower that processed benzene.

Benzene is a carcinogen that can be lethal if someone is exposed to high levels, even in short doses, according to the US National Library of Medicine's website.

The EPA admitted that the chemical slick could be extremely dangerous to people who came into contact with it.

"Chemicals like benzene are very harmful to humans so the state environmental protection administration paid big attention to this case and sent experts to Heilongjiang province," it said.

In Harbin, which has a population of nine million, there had been scenes of panic since the weekend when rumours first surfaced that water supplies would be cut off.

The government initially denied that contaminated water in the Songhua was the reason for the stoppage, leaving residents to speculate about a potential imminent earthquake.

State press reports said water was cut off for the city's 3.8 million urban residents.

- AFP