Where does 50 miles of Benzene end up.....what is going to be the outcome of this...Contaminated fish? Wildlife? Green and orange glowing animals? 50 miles of this just boggles the mind. Headed for Russia next.

A SECOND spill in another river according to this article.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20051127/D8E4P7380.html

It is man himself who will destroy this planet and render it uninhabitable....not with nuclear weapons and the like but with plain, careless ignorance and stupidity!:exp:

No Larry, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh just last week and he said very clearly that GOD created this planet and that man could not destroy it.

So, don't worry be happy :faga:

-spence

It just boggles my mind to see this kind of destruction. I can't believe there hasn't been major fish kills etc. Maybe there is but no-one has said anything about it so far. Benzene is a pretty nasty chemical.

chernobil of the sea event....

at least oil makes tar when mixed with sand...

but benzene OMG anythings possible :doh:

Anyone know WHAT benzene does in water? Prob not water soluble? Like pcb's?

I feel bad for my kids. This is the world they are inheriting. Sad.

Lets see what I can remember out of my @ss

Benzene is an Aromatic Hydrocarbon; left over from burning petroleum and from some manufacturing (plastics?)

Basically it's a D-Napl (Dense non-aqueous phase liquid) I think it sinks in water and yeah Scott, like PCB's I dont think they are soluble in water
Nasty stuff; it's a known carcinogen (cancer causer)... some colleages that do ground water geology have studied this stuff..

Noone quote the above, I may be off on a few things...

That sounds about right...if memory serves me correct, chemical oxidation with Fenton's reagent could really accelerate site remediation using subsurface injection wells.

So it can be cleaned up, although the size of this spill would be tremendously expensive. I'd be curious to see the number of samples necessary for a direct push, or field gas chromatograph study. It's got to be huge...

-spence

From a Material Safety Data Sheet - Benzene has a Specific Gravity of .88 with water at 1.0, so it will float on the surface of the river. It is slightly soluble in water, 0.18%. Therefore, it should act much like a gasoline spill on water- mostly evaporate over time - flammable under the right conditions. This is a huge spill and the cold temperatures won't help evaporation, but long-term it should not be a huge disaster. If they had their act together, they could be using floating booms and skimming it off the water. Not very likely in China, I'm afraid.

I read somewhere they were skimming it with charcoal in homemade bamboo grates. that in itself is pretty scary if all they can do is hand skimming?

Whether it's water soluble or not does not affect toxicity. Plenty of water-soluble chemicals are very harmful. The trouble with PCBs being non-water soluble means that you don't piss it back out, it accumulates in fatty tissues like reproductive organs and nerve tissue.
Water-soluble chemicals can still damage the hell out of your cells and tissues, but you then rid yourself of them.
PCBs, because they are fat soluble, bioaccumulate. That means there only has to be a little bit in the water to really screw us. Each little plankton absorbs a little bit. If a silverside eats 200,000 plankton, the PCBs from them accumulate in his fatty tissues. If a striper eats 5,000 silversides, it absorbs the PCBs from each of them, and stores it in her fatty tissues. Therefore,the concentration of PCBs in that bass you eat is MUCH higher than the concentration in the water. Many thousands of times higher.
You can minimize your PCB intake by: skinning the fish, since much of the fat is in the skin; grilling it. Much of the left-over fat will melt and drip out of the fish.
Water-soluble chemicals may still cause cancer if they damage the genes responsible for regulation of cell division. They may also cause mutation leading to birth defects in developing embryos.
To finally answer your question, though, Benzene is a non-polar molecule, and therefore not water soluble. That explains the long slick in the water. If it was soluble, it would have diffused into the water, and not have been detectable after a short time.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,177599,00.html

Another town shut down. Headed for Russia

China is an environmental nightmare. In their mad rush toward industrialization and modernization, theyve made the process cheaper and faster by ignoring control of effluents and environmental damage.

China is an environmental nightmare. In their mad rush toward industrialization and modernization, theyve made the process cheaper and faster by ignoring control of effluents and environmental damage.

so was the united states when it advocated the use of DDT....and when we finally stopped using it... we started allowing south american countries to use it instead and then imported their food to the USA.

US "experts" going there now.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/06/D8EAT5C0F.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051207/wl_nm/china_spill_dc

Wang had been quoted as saying that the accident would not cause widespread pollution. In fact 100 tonnes of cancer-causing benzene compounds spilled into the Songhua river which provides drinking water for the 9 million people of the city of Harbin. Tap water supplies had to be shut off for nearly a week.

I wonder what kind of fish he is fishing for

As a more developed and politically conscious nation, we have minimized descriminatory pollution, and share our environmental damage with all peoples, regardless of religion, race, or creed. The greenhouse effect can be shared and enjoyed by a world united!

Still going now 110 miles long.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/21/D8EKP1981.html

Guangzhou province now has a cadmium slick... I believe this is where much of China's commerce center is. REAL nasty stuff.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/12/21/051221171922.6uihclwy.html

I read that the government took the local police captain away because he didn't keep the locals from the water as quickly ashe should have and did not institute any evac....I think getting taken away in China is really being taken away.

How in the hell does someone "accidentially" dump cadmium into a river?

-spence

Spence is cadmium solid or liquid?

Cadmium is a heavy metal. It can be bonded with other molecules in liquid form, just like others. It's toxic, like lead and mercury. We get it into the environment via factory emissions. Here in Connecticut there is an advisory on eating venison liver due to high cadmium concentrations. It apparently bioaccumulates like other heavy metals.