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.
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
CYBERSCAM: Anne, an interior decorator with mental health problems, spent a year and a half believing she was communicating with Brad Pitt and lost US$855,259 A French woman who revealed on TV how she had lost her life savings to scammers posing as Brad Pitt has faced a wave of online harassment and mockery, leading the interview to be withdrawn on Tuesday. The woman, named as Anne, told the Seven to Eight program on the TF1 channel how she had believed she was in a romantic relationship with the Hollywood star, leading her to divorce her husband and transfer 830,000 euros (US$855,259). The scammers used fake social media and WhatsApp accounts, as well as artificial intelligence image-creating technology to send Anne selfies and other messages