City vows to monitor pollution

Authorities say sodium cyanide to be neutralized, taken from blast zone

Tianjin has committed to careful monitoring of air and soil pollution as it works to remove tons of sodium cyanide and water contaminated by cyanide at the site of last week's warehouse explosion, officials said on Monday.

The city has installed 27 monitoring stations near the blast zone to check water quality. Seventeen of those, all located within 3 kilometers of the main explosion, had detected cyanide since Sunday, the city's environmental protection official said.