Sunday, February 19, 2012

China Says It Curbed Spill of Toxic Metal in River

Officials in southern China appear to have averted environmental calamity by halting the spread of a toxic metal that had threatened to foul drinking water for tens of millions of people, the state media reported Monday. 

Officials said they had successfully diluted the concentration of cadmium, a poisonous component of batteries, that has been coursing down the Longjiang River in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The spill, which first occurred two weeks ago, prompted a rush on bottled water in several downstream cities and prompted worries that the contamination could reach as far as Hong Kong and Macao.

The cadmium, a substance used in the production of paint, solder and solar cells as well as batteries, has been traced to discharges from a mining company in Guangxi that has since halted production, said Xinhua, the state-run news agency.

Cadmium poisoning can cause kidney and liver damage and weaken bones.

Officials in the city of Liuzhou said workers neutralized the cadmium contamination over the weekend by dumping tons of other chemicals into the river. The chemicals, polyaluminum chloride and sodium hydroxide, are supposed to bind with the cadmium and settle to the river bottom. City officials said they would later dredge the river sediment.

Despite what appears to have been a disaster avoided, the episode highlighted China’s continuing struggle against contamination of its waterways. The Ministry of Environmental Protection has acknowledged that half the nation’s rivers and lakes are unfit for human contact, and news reports of chemical and oil spills are commonplace here.

Although the central government has invested more than $3 billion to improve water quality in recent years, officials estimate that more than 300 million people still do not have access to clean drinking water.

Cadmium poisoning has been a persistent problem, especially among those working at battery plants or living near them. Last year, a study by Nanjing Agricultural University found that 10 percent of the nation’s rice crop contained excessive cadmium levels. In several southern provinces, 60 percent of rice samples were found to exceed the national standard for the heavy metal, researchers found.

Beyond stricter enforcement of existing antipollution regulations, environmental advocates say Chinese officials must embrace greater transparency when it comes to accidents like the one that fouled the waterways in Guangxi. Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing, said that by concealing news of the spill for nearly two weeks, officials had allowed the damage to spread.

Only when fish started dying did they publicly acknowledge there was a problem,” Mr. Ma said. He also criticized the initial cleanup efforts, saying that officials upstream had hastened the cadmium’s reach by releasing water from a dam while officials downstream were struggling to contain those same waters in a reservoir.

On Monday, officials in Liuzhou proclaimed that water from the Longjiang was safe to drink, but residents of Liuzhou, a city of three million, were unconvinced, or at least confused.

We get a text message on our phones every few hours from the city government telling us the cadmium level at three places on the river, but I don’t know what the numbers mean,” said Zhang Ying, who works at a supermarket in the city.

Liao Ming, the owner of a local cafe, said that he would stick to bottled water for now but that he would probably continue using tap water to bathe. “You can’t be too picky when you are Chinese,” he said in a telephone interview, noting that his neighborhood’s air was regularly tainted by discharges from a local paper factory. “If you go down that road and get serious about this kind of stuff, you won’t have time to live.” 
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sources: nytimes.com



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