AFP/Reuters
Tap water in a Chinese city was found to contain excessive levels of the toxic chemical benzene, prompting residents to rush to buy bottled water, state media said yesterday.
Tests conducted on Thursday and yesterday showed that tap water in Lanzhou, the capital of northwestern Gansu province, had as much as 200mg of benzene per litre, 20 times the national limit, the official Xinhua news agency said, citing local environment authorities.
Benzene is an aromatic, colourless liquid and a basic raw material used in the petrochemical industry.
Human exposure to the chemical increases the risk of cancer and other illnesses.
Part of the city suspended its tap water supply and residents hurried to supermarkets to snap up bottled water, the state China News Service said.
“Lanzhou has shut down the contaminated water supply pipe and deployed activated carbon to absorb the benzene,” local authorities said in a statement.
Lanzhou’s environmental protection bureau said it is investigating the source of the pollution and that more sample tests are planned.
The water supply company, Lanzhou Veolia Water, is majority-owned by the city government, with Veolia China, a unit of French firm Veolia Environnement, holding a 45% stake.
Veolia Water said the contamination may have come from chemical-plant emissions, rather than pollution in the Yellow River that runs through the city, the report said.
“Initial investigation showed the high levels of benzene were caused by industrial contamination at one of the two culverts that transfer raw water from a sedimentation plant to the water treatment plant,” Veolia said,
Many waterways in China have suffered heavy contamination of toxic waste from factories and farms – pollution blamed on more than three decades of rapid economic growth and lax enforcement of environmental protection laws.
In February 2012, a cargo ship spilled acid into the Yangtze, China’s longest river, tainting tap supplies and sparking a run on bottled water.
The accident came a month after a more serious environmental scandal in the southwestern region of Guangxi, where factories contaminated water supplies serving millions of people with toxic cadmium and other waste.
Pictures circulating widely on Chinese Internet sites showed long lines at grocery stores where people were loading up on anything drinkable. Other images showed barren shelves cleared of bottled water.
“It’s not just bottled water that is gone. Even all the beer and milk has been snatched up,” one resident wrote on the Twitter-like service Weibo.
