Fish with bleeding ulcers are turning up in the Amur River in Russia’s Far East, sharpening concerns about the effects of a factory accident that sent a toxic chemical slick coursing through the waterway, Russian media reported on Tuesday.
Russian scientists are conducting tests to determine whether the ulcers were caused by the chemicals dumped into the river by an explosion at a Chinese plant on a tributary of the Amur, which forms the border between Russia and China and then flows through Russian territory to the Pacific Coast, the reports said.
According to the Itar-Tass news agency, ichthyologists in the region have seen the problem in the past but said that the degree to which the fish have been affected in this case is worrisome.
In comments on state-run Rossiya television, a Russian official said that studies of the river and its aquatic life had found high concentrations of chemicals that the Chinese had not listed when they informed the Russians of the content of the spill.
The chemicals included ethylbenzene, butylbenzene and chloroform, said Sergei Andriyenko, first deputy natural resources minister in the Khabarovsk region’s government. The list of toxins China provided included benzene, nitrobenzene and others.
Lyubov Kondrateyeva, the director of a laboratory at a Russian Academy of Sciences environmental studies institute in the region, told Rossiya that the chemicals found in Amur fish could be hazardous to humans.
Fishing in the Russian part of the Amur has been banned since shortly after the November accident, badly hurting riverside communities whose economies depend on it.
One local man, Nikolai Kolesnikov, indicated that he had fished following the accident but would not do so now — even if it were permitted.
”It was easy to catch fish but you couldn’t eat it — it has a very sharp smell, like medicine,” he told Rossiya. If you start to fry it you have to run out of your house, the smell is impossible to bear.” – Sapa-AP