Posted on 12/21/2005 10:40:15 AM PST by Renfield
The southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou was ordered to prepare to start emergency plans to ensure safe drinking water supplies as a toxic cadmium slick approached the city of 10 million residents. The local Guangdong provincial government issued the order to Guangzhou and neighbouring Foshan city, the Xinhua news agency said.
The incident follows a chemical spill in a river in northeast China last month that left millions without water for four days, highlighting the seriousness of water pollution in China and raising questions about Beijing's ability to handle its rapid pace of development.
The latest toxic slick was caused by an excessive discharge of cadmium from a state-owned smelting works in the Beijiang river, a major source of drinking water for cities in the northern part of Guangdong, Xinhua said on Wednesday.
The Beijiang runs into the Pearl river which flows through Guangzhou.
Waste discharges increased the volume of cadmium in the Beijiang at Shaoguan city to nearly 10 times above safety levels, "seriously endangering" the safety of water downstream, Xinhua cited the local government saying.
It did not say when the discharge occurred, but provincial environmental officials were sent to the area Sunday, Xinhua said.
Local governments have set up monitoring posts along the Beijiang river to check water quality, it said.
Officials in Yingde, a city with a population of one million some 90 kilometers (55 miles) downstream from Shaoguan, told AFP Wednesday they had lowered a dam gate to block the slick from flowing to the part of the river supplying water to Yingde's urban areas.
They were now working around the clock to build a pipeline to divert clean water from a local reservoir, to provide potable water to the 100,000 residents there.
"We've worked the whole night last night and expect to complete it in 48 hours," said an official from Yingde's Water Resources Bureau.
Cadmium is a chemical used in protective plating. Serious exposure can cause diarrhoea, stomach pains, severe vomiting, bone fracture, reproductive failure and damage to the central nervous system and the immune system.
Guangdong provincial government has decided to release water from a reservoir in the upper reaches of the river to dilute the pollution so that the water will be safe enough to drink, Xinhua quoted experts saying.
Water carriers, including 15 fire engines, were also ferrying in drinking water, it said.
A Yingde city official told AFP the city was confident it would not need to cut off water.
"There are three rivers flowing to the city. Even if Beijiang's water is unsafe, we can use water from the other rivers," said the official.
Polluted water blocked by the dam gate will be treated and then diverted elsewhere including to irrigate farmland.
The spill has polluted the river water in Shakou, a town to the north of Yingde, but Shakou officials told AFP the town of 40,000 does not rely on river water.
"We are advising the people living on both banks of Beijiang to not allow their farm animals to drink the Beijiang water," a Shakou official said.
Last month's spill in northeast China's Heilongjiang province was caused by an explosion at a benzene plant. That spill is headed to the Russian city of Khabarovsk along the Amur river and predicted to hit the city of 600,000 early Thursday.
Many factories in China are located on river banks as they need water in their production process and are notorious for discharging untreated industrial wastes into the rivers, causing most of China's river water to be undrinkable.
It's minus 30 and soon there will be no heating as slick advances on city
With severe health problems. Guess who will pay for that.
Enviro-wienies go on and on about global warming and Kyoto, yet China is the worlds largest polluter, both air and environmental, yet is exempt from Kyoto. Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant, yet these idiots with their Kyoto scam want to tax people for breathing.
Kyoto does NOTHING to address real pollution problems, like the toxic slicks regularly seen floating in the waterways in and around China.
Bush is wise NOT to be part of that scam, as our own home grown solutions to industrial pollution are already light years ahead of places like China, and anything addressed by the Kyoto accord.
Kyoto is all about money, transfer of a nations wealth to a poorer, (and polluting) country. That doesn't solve any pollution problems, it creates more.
Interesting article. That's where the world should be focusing it's eviromental concerns, not in North America. Our waterways are improving, while anything that flows in and around China is a toxic sludge. The air isn't any better either. Several years ago I took a holiday to Hong Kong. What a filthy, toxic waste dump, the waterways are little more than open sewers, and the air was unbreathable.
Bill Clinton's new handle?
I have some extra asbestos should you need it...
It's THE BLOB!!!!!!!!
Cadmium, being a heavy metal, has to be in some soluble form to stay in suspension in water...and has the water been super-saturated? In what form? Has the river bed been totally contaminated as the Cadmium comes out of suspension?
I have been following the China "accidents" lately...and this one really has me worried! There's more here than the Marixst Mediots are saying.
'....I'm having difficulty understanding the term "Cadmium Slick".....'
Yes, that caught my attention too. At pH values near neutrality elemental Cadmium isn't highly soluble in aqueous media if the water is oxygenated (although it is somewhat soluble in a reducing medium, i.e., low eH values). Cadmium sulfate is freely soluble, but most other common industrial Cadmium salts are nearly insoluble; and if it IS dissolved, then it would spread evenly throughout the water. It's not non-polar and is dense, so it wouldn't float on top in a "Slick". I suppose it could be chelated and then suspended in a light organic medium, but most probably, what we have here is more evidence of the general technical illiteracy of reporters.
I wonder if a centrifuge would help.
If we were dealing with any Cadmium Salts, there would be no "slick", but a diffusion of toxic water that would continuously dilute.
Either it is Mediots cluelessness as to their subject...or was the Cadmium in some sort of oil-base?
I also have yet to hear if any Radiation has been detected...the radioactive Cadmium might have more explanations (Think reactor columns!)!
I suspect the waste came either from a battery factory (Cadmium oxide) or (more likely) from an electro-plating facility (Cadmium sulfate). I can't think of any reason to suspend Cadmium in oil.
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