Contamination feared as fish wiped out near Tianjin blast

The government has confirmed there were about 700 tonnes of the deadly chemical sodium cyanide in a warehouse that blew up on August 12, killing at least 114 and devastating a huge swath of the city.

Photos shared on social media have racked up thousands of views since Thursday and show large numbers of dead fish gathered on the banks of the Haihe River, about 4 miles from the blast site, reports the state-run newspaper China Daily.

The website also said that although Tianjin officials had declared the city’s drinking water safe, Chinese media sources said cyanide levels in the ocean waters were found to be as much as 277 times above safe levels.

City officials have said they did not find risky levels of sodium cyanide in the river, and the fish died from an oxygen deficiency, not from poisoning.

Around 17,000 homes surrounding the warehouse zone have been damaged and more than 170 companies are reported to be affected by the blast.

Wen Wurui, head of Tianjin’s environmental protection bureau, said that the incident has had a negative impact on the environment to a certain extent, but will not significantly influence human health, according to data collected from air and water samples in the area.

But a safety assessment report conducted about Ruihai before last week’s explosions contradicted those rules, Xinhua reported.

Three other fires were burning within the core blast site, and rescue crews have been dispatched to the scene.

The vice mayor of Tianjin Municipality said that the chemicals stored at the Tianjin warehouse where two explosions occurred last week have been identified.

Tian Weiyong, director of the environmental emergency centre, said 16 water quality monitoring stations within the core zone of the blasts have detected sodium cyanide, of which eight have seen concentration exceeding national standards.

Tianjin has strengthened its efforts to prevent the dispersal of hundreds of tonnes of toxic cyanide from the site of the warehouse explosions amid rainfall forecast.

“Lately, in some places there have been major industrial safety accidents, one after the other, revealing yet again that problems in the area of industrial safety remain prominent and grave”, said a statement issued after the meeting Thursday.

Following the blasts, nationwide inspections of facilities handling risky chemicals and explosives have been ordered by China’s State Council.

Also, environmental officials pledged comprehensive measures to control and treat leaked toxic chemicals from the Tianjin explosions.