The Kremlin envoy to Russia's Far East, Kamil Iskhakov, today assured residents of Khabarovsk that it was safe to drink the city's water.
He said samples taken from the Amur are being tested and indicate that the water did not contain harmful levels of pollutants.
The slick of nitrobenzene and other toxins crossed into the city limits on the night of 22 December and is expected to take three or four days to flow through the city of some 580,000 people.
A 13 November explosion at a chemical factory in northeast China led to some 100 tons of the chemicals being dumped into the Songhua River, with the slick flowing down river to the Amur.
(ITAR-TASS/lenta.ru)