Chinese authorities tried to slow a river hit with a toxic spill by building 51 dams and were trucking polluted water upstream to dump it back into the river to filter it with cotton, straw and activated carbon, state media said yesterday.
The spill of about 60 tonnes of coal tar into the Dasha River in north China's Shanxi Province was the latest in a series of mishaps to degrade the country's already polluted waterways. Officials said there have been at least 76 water pollution accidents in the last six months.
In a separate incident on Thursday, a series of explosions rocked the Longxin Chemical Plant in the city of Longquan, Zhejiang Province, destroying two factories and threatening to contaminate the Oujiang River, which empties into the East China Sea, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
A spring that feeds the Oujiang lies close to the blast site. Large amounts of sand and stones were trucked to the site to stem the intake of the spring in an effort to prevent any waste water from contaminating the river, Xinhua said.
One person was injured and two people, a 38-year-old woman and a 42-year-old man, were reported missing after the blast, it said.
Earlier state media reports claimed the blasts released huge amounts of toxic fumes.
But an official at the Environmental Protection Bureau in Longquan said monitoring had found no serious impact to water or air quality from the disaster.
Like many Chinese bureaucrats, the official refused to give his name. He said he could not provide any further information.
The plant mainly produces hydrogen peroxide -- a chemical commonly used for bleaching, antiseptics and deodorants, the official Xinhua news agency reported late on Thursday. Industrial hydrogen peroxide contains arsenic, heavy metals and other toxic ingredients.
As a precaution, about 800 people were evacuated from the area near the factory, a female official at the Chinese Communist Party publicity office in Longquan said yesterday.
She said firefighters were standing by to help prevent further explosions, but that the blazes set off by the multiple explosions were brought under control on Thursday evening.
Some 4.7 million people live along the Oujiang.
The cause of the explosions was under investigation, the party official said.
In the Dasha River spill, a truck overloaded with 60 tonnes of coal tar -- a substance linked to cancer -- crashed and dumped its contents into the river.
Cleanup crews were scrambling yesterday to absorb the toxic substance before it reaches the Wangkuai Reservoir of Baoding, a city of about 10 million people, Xinhua said.
The pollution was said to be traveling about 1kph downstream toward Baoding, which is about 70km from the site of the accident.
The day after the spill, the pollution had reached Hebei's Fuping County, where some 50,000 residents rely on the river for drinking water. Fuping residents were told to take water from nearby reservoirs and seven standby wells until the river could be cleaned, Xinhua said.
Prolonged exposure to coal tar has been linked to cancer.
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS