China confirmed yesterday that an explosion at a petrochemical plant had caused "major pollution" of a river which has led authorities to shut off water supplies in one of its biggest cities for at least four days.
Residents of Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, were jamming the airport and rail stations to get out, a witness said.
The State Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said that the Songhua River had suffered "major water pollution" after the Nov. 13 explosion at the chemical plant upstream.
"After the blast at the chemical plant the monitoring station in Jilin found that benzene went into the river and polluted the water," the EPA said in a statement on its Web site. "Benzene levels were 108 times above national safety levels."
The polluting material index had dropped to 29 times above national safety levels when the contaminants reached the border of Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces on Sunday, the EPA said.
The explosion happened in Jilin Province only a few hundred meters from the Songhua River, which supplies water to Harbin, a metropolitan area of 9 million people. Five people were killed in the blast.
"Pollution is definite," said a regional water official, who declined to give his name. "It has entered the Songhua River and has affected the banks and lower reaches."
The Beijing Times newspaper said the pollutants in the partly frozen river included benzene, an industrial solvent and component of gasoline.
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 Web site.
The EPA admitted that the chemical slick could be extremely dangerous to people who came into contact with it.
An environmental official quoted by Xinhua said the polluted water was expected to reach the stretch of river where Harbin siphons off its drinking water last night and clear the city by tomorrow afternoon.
Taps were turned off in Harbin at midnight on Tuesday after two days of panic buying of bottled water and food in a city where winter temperatures regularly drop below minus 20?C.
One factory manager said: "Everyone wants to leave Harbin and it is very difficult to buy tickets, just like during the Lunar New Year holiday."
"All containers are being used to store water, including the bathtub. It will be okay for four days, but not longer than that," the manager said.
Fifteen hospitals were on standby to take in contamination victims, Xinhua said.
A notice on the city government Web site saying supplies would resume in four days has been superseded by another saying a resumption date would be announced later.
"The new notice does not necessarily mean an extension," a Harbin government spokesman said.
"But we will make a decision after four days according to the water quality at that time," he said.
Meanwhile, Russian government officials in the east of their country said yesterday they were monitoring the Amur river, of which the Songhua is a tributary, for toxic substances.
The officials said the Songhua (called Sungari in Russia) was the main source of drinking water for Khabarovsk, home to 600,000 residents, just across the Chinese border about 600km from Harbin.
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