An environmental group warned on Friday that the toxic mud spill in western Hungary contains dangerously high levels of arsenic and mercury that pose a long-term risk to the ecosystem and drinkable water, according to dpa. The regional branch of Greenpeace charged that the Hungarian government, which had access to the analysis a day after the accident, had concealed the toxicity of the mud, which reached the Danube river on Thursday. "We find it quite strange, to put it mildly, that the Hungarian government and the responsible authorities didn't publicly announce the real amounts of toxic substances," Herwig Schuster, a chemistry expert for Greenpeace, told reporters in Vienna. Meanwhile, the spill claimed the life of another victim, with the death of an 81-year-old patient with chemical burns to 70 per cent of his body. His death brings to five those killed in Monday's spill in the town of Kolontar. Greenpeace criticized the authorities for not warning rescue workers of the aggressive nature of the alkaline chemicals. "They let people work with bare hands. Firefighters showed me their hands, which are covered by chemical burns," Greenpeace activist Bernd Schaudinnus said. Analysis of water in a canal in Kolontar showed arsenic levels 25 times above the threshold for drinking water, the group said. Arsenic and mercury can damage the human nervous system and other organs. The European Union is set to send a team of experts to the affected region to take environmental measurements, Hungarian Interior Minister Sandor Pinter said in Budapest. Serbian and Hungarian experts jointly took samples of water from Danube at an entry point to Serbia and were due to announce the results of their analyses on Saturday. Greenpeace estimated that it will be years before some 4,000 hectares of land will be suitable again for agriculture or other use. Once the toxic sludge dries, it could be carried by wind to neighbouring Austria, Greenpeace said. A local Hungarian environmental office said the effluent, from a chemical processing plant, has virtually dissolved after flowing into the Danube river. It said the alkaline level of the river was normal.
