Eleven tonnes of cyanide spills into Chinese river
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BEIJING, Nov 5 AFP - Thousands of soldiers have been mobilised to contain a massive cyanide spill in a river in central China which is posing a health risk to local residents and farm animals, officials said today. Eleven tonnes of liquid sodium cyanide began leaking into a tributary of the Luohe river in Henan province over the weekend after a traffic accident on Thursday, an official with the Luoning county government said. Soldiers had erected two dams around the contaminated area, measuring four kilometres in length, she said. ``At present the spill is contained and there is no danger of the contamination seeping into the Luohe river.'' [[advertisement]] The Luohe river is a shallow tributary of the Yellow River, the cradle of Chinese civilisation and a major waterway in northern China. As little as 0.3 grams of the chemical is enough to kill an adult, the China Daily reported, adding that so far only one person had been poisoned. The barrages around the spill appeared to have been made of sand and gravel dumped from trucks. Soldiers had also dumped 500 tonnes of disinfectants into the contaminated area in an effort to disperse the poison, the report said. Local media said the cyanide had been restricted to ``a few kilometres of the river'', while water in the lower reaches was ``not seriously polluted''. Investigations into the cause of the accident and spillage were underway, while six people suspected of causing the incident had been arrested, the China Daily said. Officials did not say why the cyanide was being transported. The bulk of sodium cyanide worldwide is used in the mining industry, as a means of extracting gold and silver from rock.