MOSCOW - A chemical spill that poisoned drinking water for millions of Chinese has reached a major city in Russia's far east, a news agency said on Thursday, but the concentration of pollutants was no longer considered dangerous.
"Analysis of the water showed that the benzene content does not exceed ... the maximum allowable concentration," RIA-Novosti quoted an Emergencies Ministry official as saying.
"As a result the city authorities have decided not to turn off the Khabarovsk water supply because of the arrival at the city of the slick of polluted water."
Khabarovsk, a city of 580,000, had readied alternative water supplies while waiting for the slick to wind its way northeast to Russia's Amur river, known in China as Heilong.
An explosion at a chemical plant in China's Jilin province last month poured some 100 tonnes of cancer-causing benzene compounds into the Songhua river, poisoning the drinking water.
Russian workers also had temporarily dammed a waterway to divert the pollution away from a river area where Khabarovsk gets its water.
China is facing another environmental disaster this week as the southern province of Guangdong scrambles to protect its water supplies while a waste spill from a zinc smelter flows along a major river towards several cities.
Around 70 percent of China's rivers are contaminated, raising questions about the cost of its economic boom.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
