The Chinese city of Lanzhou said its 2.4 million residents were able to drink tap water from noon today as tests showed contamination of supplies by the chemical benzene had been cleaned up.
“Tap water quality will meet the standard to ensure safe water supply,”according to a statement posted today on the website of the city, 1,700 kilometers (1,100 miles) northwest of Shanghai.
Investigators traced the contamination to a leak from an oil transmission pipeline, owned by a unit of China National Petroleum Corp., which polluted the water feeding into a local water plant, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, citing comments by Yan Zijiang, Lanzhou’s environmental protection chief, to the city government today.
Residents in Lanzhou, the capital of Gansu province, were without tap water for more than a day after levels of benzene surged as high as 200 micrograms per liter of water, compared with the national limit of 10 micrograms, the official Xinhua News Agency reported yesterday, citing the city’s environmental protection office.
Tests today showed benzene levels in one of the two districts with the worst contamination fell below 10 while the other area was below 20, China Central Television reported.
Pictures posted yesterday on the Weibo, or microblog, account of the official Gansu Daily newspaper showed what the captions indicated to be residents making a run on bottled water in a local supermarket. The People’s Liberation Army and the police transported water from suburbs to the downtown area to ensure adequate supplies, CCTV said today, showing footage of students queuing up beside the trucks.
Cancer Risk
Excessive amounts of benzene, a colorless liquid often used to make plastics, can increase the risk of cancer, according to Xinhua.
In a report today, Xinhua said the water treatment plant washed its filter system to clean out the pollutant last night and flushed the city’s tap water pipeline.
The benzene was believed to have come from chemical waste, Xinhua said yesterday, citing unidentified executives at the local water supply company, a venture between the China unit of Paris-based Veolia Environnement SA and the local government.
The executives didn’t identify any chemical plant as the possible origin of the spill, Xinhua said.
To contact the Bloomberg News staff on this story: Zhang Dingmin in Beijing at dzhang14@bloomberg.net
To contact the reporters on this story: Tian Ying in Beijing at ytian@bloomberg.net; Zhang Dingmin in Beijing at dzhang14@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stanley James atsjames8@bloomberg.net Nerys Avery, Jim McDonald
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