THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

First you can't swim in the river because of all the dead pigs floating by. Then you really don't want to breath the air because the pollution is thick enough to chew. Now you can't even wash the crap out of your mouth because of an oil pipeline leak.

A crude oil leak from a pipeline owned by a unit of China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) is to blame for water contamination that has affected more than 2.4 million people in the Chinese city of Lanzhou, in the the landlocked northwest part of the country, according to Chinese media reports Saturday.

The leak poisoned the water source for a water plant, introducing hazardous levels of benzene into the city's water, according to China's official news agency Xinhua.

Residents scrambled to buy bottled water after authorities warned against using taps, in scenes reminiscent of a municipal water ban in the United States, following a coal-processing chemical spill that affected 300,000 West Virginians in January.

Xinhau cited Yan Zijiang, Lanzhou's environmental protection chief, as saying that a leak in a pipeline owned by Lanzhou Petrochemical Co., a unit of CNPC, was to blame for the water contamination.

The spill comes amid a push by Beijing to reign in pollution in China, which has seen environmental degradation come along with fast economic growth. Last week, a government review of 25,000 companies found 2,000 failed to meet pollution standards.

Lanzhou, a heavily industrialized city of 3.6 million people in the northwestern province of Gansu, ranks among China's most polluted centers.

Lanzhou Petrochemical is a major refinery with a total refining capacity of 280,000 barrels per day (bpd). The company plans to process 195,000 bpd of crude this year, industry sources have said.

Levels of benzene, a cancer-inducing chemical, in Lanzhou's tapwater on Friday rose 20 times above national safety levels, Lanzhou authorities said in a press release.

Lanzhou city authorities said Friday that they found 200 micrograms of benzene per liter of water. The national safety standard is 10 micrograms.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency sets its maximum limit for benzene at 5 micrograms per liter of water, but says zero is the ideal amount.

The high benzene levels forced the city to turn off the water supply in one district and city officials warned citizens not to drink tap water for the next 24 hours.

And the saddest part is that China is probably setting the standards for the future of our planet.