Toxic spill heads for Russia, China offers help

BEIJING - Thousands of children returned to school in China's Harbin city on Tuesday a week after a toxic spill prompted officials to turn off the water taps and now threatens supplies for more than a million Russians downstream.

An explosion at a chemical plant in the northeastern Chinese city of Jilin on Nov. 13 poured 100 tonnes of cancer-causing benzene compounds into the Songhua river upstream of Harbin, a city of nine million people.

Officials cut off the water in Harbin before the 80km slick arrived. It has since cleared the city but will arrive at a major city in Russia's far east within days.

Harbin, in Heilongjiang province, reopened its taps on Sunday after five days. True to his word, provincial governor Zhang Zuoji drank the first glass of tap water to prove it was safe, but many residents were sceptical.

The city's 400,000 primary and secondary school students returned to school on Tuesday after a week-long break with many bringing bottled water from home, state media said.

"The water was red when it resumed. Now, it's yellow like the colour of tea. It doesn't smell but it's not safe to drink yet," a 40-year-old resident named Zhou told Reuters by telephone.

Last weekend China apologised to Russia for the river water crisis. It has now agreed to provide monitoring equipment to its neighbour and help train Russian personnel as the toxic slick nears the Siberian border, the Chinese State Environmental Protection Administration said on its website.

Russia's environmental watchdog said on Monday the spill could reach the first Russian settlements in the next two to three days, while the Emergencies Ministry said it could start affecting the major Siberian city of Khabarovsk by Dec. 10-12.

Russian television footage showed shops unloading bottled water supplies while scientists pushed aside lumps of ice to test the Amur river, which is fed by the Songhua -- Sungari in Russian. More than 1 million people could be affected.

Although officials say the slick should be less toxic by the time it crosses into Russia, chief state epidemiologist Gennady Onishchenko has noted that the dangerous compounds would have been diluted faster had the river been in full flow rather than half-frozen.

Benzene poisoning causes anaemia, other blood disorders and kidney and liver damage.

In Bayan county in suburban Harbin, tests showed the level of nitro-benzene in the water at 0.1994 milligrams per litre, 10.73 times acceptable levels, the environment administration said.

- REUTERS