Drinking water in Tianjin meets national standards, health authority says
Chinese authorities warned that cyanide levels in the waters around the Tianjin Port explosion site had risen to as much as 277 times acceptable levels although they declared that the city’s drinking water was safe.
The local government, under pressure from China’s leaders in Beijing to improve industrial safety, also said it would relocate chemical plants away from the area, where thousands of residents were forced to evacuate last week after the release of toxic chemicals by explosions that killed 114 people.
China’s ruling Politburo Standing Committee called on all levels of governments during a special meeting on Thursday to do more to implement and monitor industrial safety rules, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
“Recently, there’s been a series of serious accidents in certain places, once again exposing grave safety risks,” Xinhua quoted from the meeting, which was called by President Xi Jinping to address the Tianjin explosions.
- 9 of the world’s worst industrial disasters
- China explosions: Warehouse executives used connections to get permit, state media say
- China explosions: Top safety official detained
- China explosion: Tianjin residents demand compensation
A report from the Tianjin Environmental Protection Bureau issued on Wednesday said that tests conducted the day before showed that cyanide levels in the river, sea and waste water in the evacuated area around the explosion site had risen sharply since the deadly blasts. One testing site at the mouth of a rain water pipe recorded cyanide levels 277 times above acceptable standards.
Drinking water in Tianjin, however, met national standards, according to a separate statement from health authorities on Tuesday.
The government has confirmed there were about 700 tonnes of the deadly chemical sodium cyanide in the warehouse that blew up late last Wednesday.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
