MOSCOW, December 19 (RIA Novosti) - A massive slick containing potentially lethal benzene in the Amur River may reach the city of Khabarovsk on December 21, a spokesman for the local branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
The representative said that traces of the slick, which formed after a November 13 explosion at a petrochemicals plant in China dumped about 100 metric tons of toxic chemical into an Amur tributary, could remain around the city, home to 600,000, for four or five days.
The spokesman also said that level of the Amur could rise by about a meter and a half after the Chinese authorities released water from reservoirs into the river in a bid to reduce the benzene concentration levels.
Earlier on Monday, the Russian president's envoy to the Far East said the benzene slick was 90 kilometers (about 60 miles) away from Khabarovsk. The concentration of the potentially lethal chemical was .52 of the maximum allowable concentration.
