60 Tons Of Coal Tar Spills Into Northern Chinese River - AFP

Yum! Drink up!

About 60 tons of coal tar has contaminated a river in northern China and is threatening to pollute a reservoir which supplies water to a city of 10 million, state media reported Wednesday. A truck carrying the chemical overturned on Monday afternoon in Shanxi province, causing the sticky liquid to spill into the Dasha River, Xinhua news agency reported.
The oily slick, moving at about one kilometer per hour, was approaching the Wangkuai reservoir in neighboring Hebei province, which is about 70 kilometers (43 miles) from the accident scene, it said.

The reservoir is one of two key reservoirs that supplies water to the city of Baoding with a population of more than 10 million.

Workers have set up nine dams and poured 10 tons of active carbon into the river in an attempt to stop the spill from spreading further, Xinhua said.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Coal_Tar_Spillage_Contaminates_Northern_Chinese_River.html

In the US, 16 of the PAHs found in coal tar are on the priority pollutant list, and coal tar has enough of each one to raise havok.

http://www.ohvec.org/issues/overweight_coal_trucks/index.html

Even wiith legal haulage limits of 120,000 lbs, coal companies have been caught filling trucks to 160,000 lbs or more. Once one of these things gets out of control, it just rolls over anyone or anything that gets in its way. At least 13 people in WV have been killed in coal truck accidents since 2000.

on an immense and even global scale.

They'll be the poster child for overshoot & collapse. I have to laygh at the neoclassical economists when they make their ridicuous projections about how powerful China will be 20 years down the line.

Talk about a set of otherwise intelligent people who are completely divorced from reality....

They may collapse, but then so could we. We're pretty divorced from reality here, too. Sigh.