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| Photo courtesy: New China. |
Chinese authorities have denied that the deaths of thousands of fish near the scene of a catastrophic industrial disaster are linked to last week’s chemical explosions in Tianjin which killed at least 114 people.
Photographs showing the surface of the River Hai coated in dead sticklebacks spread on social media sites on Thursday, adding to fears that military clean up teams had failed to prevent chemicals leaking out of the blast site.
Authorities say around 40 types of chemicals were being stored at the warehouse at the centre of the explosions including ammonium nitrate and large quantities of sodium cyanide.
However, Xinhua, China’s official news agency, said no toxic levels of cyanide had been found in the river during tests on Thursday afternoon. The fish were found around 6km from the blast site.
Deng Xiaowen, the head of Tianjin’s environment monitoring centre, vowed to investigate the fish deaths but claimed “it was not uncommon for fish to die en masse in local rivers during summer, due to poor water quality.”
“When the temperature rises, oxygen will evaporate and fish may die of hypoxia,” he was quoted as saying by the Global Times.
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