So what's next.....

[RIROCKHOUND]

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...

[spence]

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

[fishnfriar]

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.

[UserRemoved1]

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?

[baldwin]

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.