Polish Climate Minister Anna Moskwa announced Tuesday that water samples from polluted Oder River would be sent to the Netherlands and UK for additional testing. "Apart from being tested in Polish institutions, the samples were also sent to a laboratory in the Czech Republic. Today they will be delivered to the Netherlands and Great Britain," Moskwa said on Twitter.
"Experts from Oder pollution team have decided water samples will be sent to foreign laboratories. Apart from being tested in Polish institutions, the samples were also sent to a laboratory in the Czech Republic. Today they will be delivered to the Netherlands and Great Britain," Poland's Minister of Climate and Environment Anna Moskwa said in a tweet on Tuesday.
Polish and German authorities are still trying to find the cause behind a mass fish die-off in the river Oder as a clean up operation to remove tonnes of dead fish continues.
Tonnes of dead fish have been found since late July in the river Oder, which runs through Germany and Poland. Both sides have said they believe a toxic substance is to blame but have yet to identify it.
Green activists and opposition politicians have criticised the Polish government for not responding quickly enough to the danger and failing to alert Poles to avoid bathing and angling in the river that has been contaminated since late July.
The German and Polish governments have said the mass die-off is a major environmental catastrophe and the waterway could take years to return to normal.
Tests: no mercury nor heavy metals detected
Poison cannot be ruled out as the cause of a mass die-off of fish in the Oder river but tests so far have not proven toxic substances were to blame, Polish Environment Minister Anna Moskwa said on Sunday.
"As of today, none of these (water) tests have confirmed the presence of toxic substances," Moskwa said after meeting with her German counterpart and other German and Polish officials.
"At the same time, we are conducting tests on fish. We have completed fish tests for mercury and heavy metals. Neither mercury nor heavy metals were found in the collected samples," she added.
Moskwa said samples were being tested for the presence of pesticides and around 300 more substances would be checked
"We still do not exclude a variant of the toxic substances...so we are interested in the prompt identification of the perpetrator... We are checking entities which run business and industrial activity along the river," Moskwa added.
Źródło: TVN24 News in English, tvn24.pl, PAP, Reuters