On November 29, 2005, Geoff Dyer re****ted from Shanghai for Financial
Times that environmental experts warned it could take from three to
five years to get rid of the toxic chemicals -- benzene and
nitrobenzene -- which spilled into Harbin's main river.
Read the article in
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c74629d8-607c-11da-a3a6-0000779e2340.html
An outline of the article:
* Harbin suffered a 5-day shut-down of its water supply last week
because of a chemical spill in Songhua River caused by a plant
200km up the river.
* Gu Jidong, a Harbin native who now teaches environmental
toxicology at the University of Hong Kong, said the heavy
concentrations of chemicals absorbed by the river-bed and
sediment will be gradually released into the water over a
period of time.
* According to Bloomberg, Sergei Zimin, a spokesman for the
local government in Khabarovsk, said the river had been
polluted with benzene from Chinese chemical plants before
the November 13 explosion in Jilin City. Russia named Songhua
River as Amur.
