Toxic river: Authorities rush to secure safe drinking water

This is the second manmade toxin to hit a Chinese river in six weeks.
BEIJING (AP) -- China's government rushed Thursday to shield the country's southern business center, Guangzhou, from a toxic spill of cadmium flowing toward the city of 7 million -- the second manmade disaster to hit a Chinese river in six weeks.
Meanwhile, a slick of toxic benzene from the first accident in the north arrived in the Russian city of Khabarovsk, where worried residents flooded a telephone hot line.
The twin disasters highlight the precarious state of China's water supplies for industry and homes. Regulators say its major rivers are badly polluted and millions of people lack access to clean water.
The accidents are an embarrassment to President Hu Jintao's government, which has promised to clean up environmental damage from China's 25 years of breakneck economic growth.
Authorities in southern China were dumping water from reservoirs into the Bei River to dilute the cadmium spill from a smelter.
Cadmium is a soft, bluish-white metal found in lead and zinc ores. Exposure to it can cause lung and prostate cancer, kidney damage and bone disease, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The government did not say when the smelter spill would reach Guangzhou, the heart of the region near Hong Kong with factories supplying China's booming export industries. But the official Xinhua News Agency said city leaders were ordered to "start emergency plans to ensure safe drinking water supplies."
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