"Salt rush" in China over radiation fears

09:03, March 18, 2011

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Li Jianmin in Beijing received a phone call from his friend Li Shulei in Xingtai, a city in north China's Hebei Province about 400 kilometers from Beijing.

"Can you buy me some salt? As much as possible!" Li Shulei said in a hurry. He is the owner of a small restaurant. Since Wednesday, however, he found it hard to keep his restaurant open, as he couldn't find any supermarket in the city where he could buy salt.

Li Jianmin went to Carrefour shop near his home at noon, only to be told that all the salt had sold out in the morning.

"Now you can't buy any salt in Beijing," he quoted a salesman as saying, adding that on his way home, he heard several people talking via cell phone about the panic buying.

The Wu-Mart supermarket near Xuanwumen in downtown Beijing opens at 7:30 a.m. every day. On Thursday, however, salt, including bamboo salt, were sold out in less than two hours of its service for the day.

"Everybody came to me with salt and I was very busy this morning," said a cashier. "When I realized that I should buy some for myself, the salt had been sold out."

Pointing at an empty shelf, she said, "Look, people are beginning to buy soy sauce. Pickles will be next."

The panic buying started in Shandong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Fujian provinces, as well as Shanghai, all on China's seaboard.

In Carrefour store at Yongjin in southern Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang, salesman Xia Dachun told Xinhua that normally, they sold about 100 packs of salt a day.

"From about 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, we sold out of all the supplies for a week," Xia said.

Other inland areas such as Shanxi, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangxi, Guizhou, Sichuan provinces, Chongqing City, and Ningxia Hui and Inner Mongolia autonomous regions were also caught up in the panic buying.

In the small town of Zhangmuqiao in the Lu'an City of Anhui, residents had to drive to other cities to buy salt.

Bai Jing from Hefei, Anhui's provincial capital, was stunned by her mother's act Wednesday evening. "She was playing outside with my son, but soon my son came home on his own. Later my mom called me to carry something for her."

Bai went outside, seeing her mother stepping out of a cab. "She bought two boxes of salt. Two boxes!"

NO NEED

Sun Shusheng, general manager with the Shandong Salt Industry Group and vice director of the salt industry bureau of Shandong, said salt was not useful at all in reducing the impact of potential radiation poisoning by the crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant of Japan.

"Salt sold at Chinese market is iodized, but the content is quite low," said Sun, "Besides, taking too much iodine is not good for health."

Experts said a way to reduce the impact of possible radioactivity was to take iodine tablets, as thyroid glands were the first to be attacked by radioactive iodine and the pills could prevent iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid glands.

According to Sun, China produces 72 million tonnes of edible salt each year, of which half comes from inland mines. The rest is produced by Shandong.

"The salt we produce is not from sea water," said Sun,"It is made from the underground brine in Laizhou City."

China National Salt Industry Corp., the country's largest salt supplier, told Xinhua in a statement that the country's salt reserves were "ample to meet people's needs."

Xu Zhengqiang with the environmental monitoring center of Ningbo in east China's Zhejiang Province believed it was unlikely China's sea water would be polluted by the leakage from the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

"The sea water contains radioactive substance as well," Xu said. "The nuclear disaster in Japan couldn't pollute the entire Pacific Ocean. Besides, the warm current affecting the Sea of Japan is northward, so it wouldn't carry the hazardous particles to China."

Xu's view was shared by Yang Guoshan, a research fellow in radiation medicine with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences.

"The leakage from the crippled reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant would affect people within limited kilometers, but China is several thousand kilometers away from Japan," Yang said. "Suppose I am smoking and you are standing meters away. The influence is small."

But many Chinese remained calm amid the panic.

"I think someone deliberately spread the rumor to raise the price of salt," said Li Zhihua, a resident of Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan. Over the past week people have received text messages telling them to buy salt.

In dealing with the panic salt buying, the Beijing Municipal Public Security Department Tongzhou Branch on Thursday issued a statement saying some rumor mongers may have been spreading false information for personal gains.

"Spreading false information could cause panic in the society. Such activities have disrupted the social order and those accountable for them will face legal punishment if evidence is proven," said the statement. Enditem

Xinhua writers Yu Li in Chengdu, Ren Liying in Shijiazhuang, Qu Lingyan from Hangzhou also contributed to the story.

Source: Xinhua

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