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Hydrometry, Environment and Floods
News Release from: SPECIAL REPORT by the Editor | Subject:
Edited by the Processingtalk Editorial
Team on 30 November 2005
Benzene spill at Petrochina in Jilin
An editorial comment on the problems caused in China by 100 tonnes of benzene, spilled from a Petrochina petrochemical plant in Jilin, 200 miles up the Songhua River from Harbin, on 13 November
Much in the news this week have been reports on the problems caused in China by 100 tonnes of benzene, spilled from a Petrochina petrochemical plant in Jilin, 200 miles up the Songhua River from Harbin, on 13 November The spill has taken 14 days to reach, affect and pass through Harbin: but this is not the end
This article was originally published on Processingtalk on 3 Aug 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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The Songhua joins the Amur River, the sixth longest in the world, which wends its way in multiple streams to the Pacific, over 1000 miles away from Harbin.
Not through China but Russia, through a rich fertile plain emerging at the northern tip of Sakhalin Island.
So who will this benzene spill radically affect on the way? First downstream there is Khabarovsk, population 700k, then Amursk (60k with wood processing plants) and Komsomolsk (320k with a steel industry).
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But this will be a delayed action disaster - the rivers, and the sea off Sakhalin, as we know from the platforms off that island, freeze up from late November: temperatures drop to -26C.
Maybe this is good, in that the benzene will be much diluted when slowly released in the spring thaw.
Probably the next we will hear of it is when a nature programme reports on the bad effect on the 'unique home for 100 species of fish, and 95% of the Oriental white stork population'.
For the river delta farmers and fishermen it is a disaster in a harsh, unforgiving part of the world, a disaster that the petrochemicals industry has imposed on them.
The first fishermen have been arrested in Harbin, for continuing to do what they always have done.
The food chain is already affected.
Look at what Roman technology did in the same way to the Ancient Britons 2000 years ago: a story this week tells that the amazing technology available in an X-RF scanner from Ashtead Technology Rentals, which was the source of a warning for some TV reporters - acting a lot more responsibly than I would have expected.
The warning was that explorative digging on an old Roman lead mine waste tip was too dangerous to contemplate, because of hazardous levels of heavy metal pollution in the soil! A practical example of what technology can do to identify the areas of the planet man exploits, lasting forever.
We don't know what food production line detection/inspection systems will be considered as a requirement in 200 years time - never mind 2000 - to detect pollutants in the way the X-RF analyser does with these metals.
Presumably we will have on-line analysers on food and water supplies to alarm for the presence of ----PCBs? Copper? E-coli? Enzymes? Benzene? Hopefully we will know what to do when the alarms go off: the fishermen in Harbin did not have a real option, they had to keep on fishing!.
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