The Songhua River Benzene Chemical Spill Comes To Russia

And the effects wont be pretty:

"The Chinese have poisoned my life," she said with a sigh.

After weeks of frantic efforts to minimize the effects on the 580,000 residents of Khabarovsk, officials say the chemical spill from a Chinese factory upriver could reach city limits as early as Thursday.

Workers from the Emergency Situations Ministry have set up camp next to Vityuk's village of Nizhnespasskoye, 50 miles from Khabarovsk, to monitor the ecological damage from the Nov. 13 spill.

Every three hours, scientists drill holes in the river ice and draw water into bottles suspended on strings. As prosecutors look on, they seal the samples and send them to Khabarovsk for analysis.

"I have nothing comforting to say," said Yevgeny Rozhkov, an engineer from the Far East Meteorological Agency. "Other than benzene and nitrobenzene, we've found chlorine and phenol."

Khabarovsk regional Gov. Viktor Ishayev has accused China of withholding information on the chemicals released in the spill.

Rozhkov said the situation could be worse than the water samples indicate because benzene and nitrobenzene are heavier than water and are settling on the river bottom or sticking to the ice.

The spill began on November 13 with an explosion at a chemical plant near Harbin. The spill wasn't detected right away, and then its existence was supressed by the government. It was only when dead fish were spotted in the river did people begin to realize what happened.