The tap water supply for 80,000 residents in Yueyang County of central China's Hunan Province resumed on Tuesday evening after being suspended for four days due to arsenide pollution.

 

"We have informed the residents through television and radio that they could have clean and safe water," Tong Kangning, secretary of the Yueyang County Committee of the Communist Party of China told Xinhua.

 

The local government is continuing to monitor water quality even though tests have showed the water is safe to drink.

 

"The county's disease control department has sent workers to some homes to test if the tap water is OK," said Tong.

 

No casualties have been reported from the contamination in Yueyang County since the pollution was uncovered on Sept. 8, when workers from the local environmental monitoring center conducted routine testing of water quality in the Xinqiang River and found the content of arsenide was ten times higher than normal standards.

 

Two chemical plants less than 20 km from the polluted river were blamed for illegal discharges of a highly toxic arsenic compound into the river.

 

The factories have been shut down and police have detained Yao Zhaohui and Liu Chengping, two managers of the factories in Linxiang city

 

They could face criminal charges and prosecution, said Pan Yue,deputy head of the State Administration of Environmental Protection.

 

The two companies had not passed any environmental assessments and had no pollution treatment facilities. They have been discharging waste water directly into the Xinqiang River for a long time, said Pan. The arsenide content of the waste water was more than 1,000 times higher than the national limit.

 

Arsenic trioxide is a highly toxic white powdery substance that can cause vomiting, stomach pains and convulsions, and can lead to coma or death.

 

A chronic intake of arsenide can also cause liver and kidney damage or lung and skin cancer.

 

(Xinhua News Agency September 13, 2006)