Geopolitical Rant of the Day: Benzene Floats Downstream

Environmental Disasters continue to occur in countries with lax safety standards. The Songhua River flows with a 50 mile stretch of water contaminated by benzene, which is winding it's way to Russia's Amur River. Russia is downplaying the severity of this disaster because their economic ties with China are more important than protecting it's citizens from cancer causing agents (The BBC).

Although the Chinese citizens will never know, scientists have predicted that the benzene with settle into the sediment of the river, to be eaten by tiny fish, thus entering the food chain. Benzene with an insidious ability to bond to and mutate DNA, causing cancer, is a persistant chemical that is not metabolized by the body. Thusly it can accumulate in bodies much in the way DDT did in the eagles.

Oddly, the usually heavily restained Chinese newpapers, are actively critisizing the governments response to the spill, so perhaps their is the silver lining of raising Chinese awareness of the environment.