Atlas of Contaminated Sites

Notable case, Jilin City, Jilin / Heilongjiang, China

Songhua River (Jilin spill, 2005)

松花江水污染事件

On 13 November 2005 an explosion at a petrochemical plant in Jilin sent about 100 tonnes of benzene, aniline and nitrobenzene into the Songhua River. Harbin, with four million people, went without tap water for four days and the slick reached Russia along the Amur: for UNEP, one of the largest transboundary chemical spills in a river in recent years.

Microbial bioremediation

Status
Remediated
Activity
until 2005
People affected
4,000,000 (2005)2
Media
surface water, sediment
Kind of site
petrochemicals, accident
  1. Area. Linear pollution: the plume was 80 km long when passing Harbin and 150 km at Jiamusi (UNEP, 2005). The coordinates mark the Jilin plant where the explosion happened.
  2. People affected. Population of Harbin, left without mains water from 23 to 27 November 2005, plus the 20,000 residents of Dalianhe: the only two places drawing drinking water directly from the river (UNEP).

Contaminants

Organic compounds

Status

Remediated

An acute event: the plume travelled down the river between November and December 2005 and entered the Amur. Water and ice samples taken afterwards showed nitrobenzene between 0 and 0.65 µg/L, well below China's drinking water limit of 17 µg/L (Dai and colleagues 2010). There was no clean-up: the river cleared by dilution, volatilisation, photolysis and biodegradation.

Story

The explosion happened in the nitration unit for aniline production at the Jilin plant of Jilin Petrochemical Corporation, part of the CNPC group. According to Wikipedia six people died and more than 10,000 were evacuated. About 100 tonnes of benzene, aniline and nitrobenzene, in unknown proportions, went into the river (UNEP).

The plume moved downstream at 1–1.5 km an hour. It reached Harbin on 25 November, with a nitrobenzene peak of 0.581 mg/L, 33.15 times the limit; benzene was already below the limit and aniline undetectable. The city had shut its river-fed water supply from 23 to 27 November. The Harbin authorities first explained the shutdown as maintenance, and only later as due to the spill: UNEP judged communication with the public in the first phase inadequate. On 11 December nitrobenzene at Jiamusi stood at 0.173 mg/L.

To dilute the slick, releases from the Fengman reservoir were increased. Cages of activated carbon, straw and maize stalks were lowered at the waterworks intakes and, according to the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, held back up to 40% of the nitrobenzene; freezing prevented wider use of the method. The river froze with part of the nitrobenzene trapped in the ice, at a quarter of the concentration in the water. At Russia's request Heilongjiang province built a diversion dam on the Fuyuan waterway, closed on 21 December, to protect Khabarovsk's water intakes. China and Russia began joint monitoring.

Timeline

  1. 200513 November: explosion at the Jilin petrochemical plant.
  2. 200523–27 November: Harbin shuts its water supply; on the 25th the nitrobenzene peak, 33 times the limit.
  3. 200510–16 December: UNEP mission at the invitation of China's environment agency.
  4. 200521 December: the diversion dam on the Fuyuan waterway is closed to protect Khabarovsk.

Health

Six dead and at least 70 injured in the explosion (Wikipedia; the UNEP report gives no toll). No studies of health effects from exposure through water were found.

Remediation

  1. 2005dilutionIncreased release from the Fengman hydroelectric reservoir, upstream of Jilin.
  2. 2005activated carbonCages of activated carbon, straw and maize stalks at waterworks intakes; China also donated 150 tonnes of activated carbon to Russia.
  3. 2005diversion damDiversion dam on the Fuyuan waterway, closed on 21 December.

Plants and fungi at this site

Microbial bioremediationLaboratory, with soil from the site, 2005–2008

Not an intervention but a measure of natural attenuation: the ability of microbial communities in water and sediment from several sections of the Songhua to degrade nitrobenzene, in the laboratory, under aerobic conditions for water (22 °C) and anaerobic conditions for sediment (10 °C).

Outcome Communities from every section, including one upstream of the spill point, were able to degrade nitrobenzene (Li and colleagues 2008; rates not read). A parallel study estimates a half-life of 17.2–21.5 hours for photolysis in river water (Wang and colleagues 2008).

From the literature

Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.

Fungi

Sources

  1. The Songhua River Spill, China, December 2005. Field Mission Report, UNEP, 2005
  2. Dai Y. et al. Determination of nitrobenzene in water and ice samples collected from the Songhua River after an explosion of a petrochemical plant. Analytical Sciences 26 (abstract), Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry, 2010
  3. Li Z. et al. Nitrobenzene biodegradation ability of microbial communities in water and sediments along the Songhua River after a nitrobenzene pollution event (abstract), Journal of Environmental Sciences, 2008
  4. 2005 Jilin chemical plant explosions, Wikipedia, 2026

Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.