A crude-oil leak contaminated a northwest Chinese city’s water supply and spurred panicked buying of bottled drinking water over the weekend, deepening nationwide concerns over public health risks from environmental hazards. The government in the city of Lanzhou, the capital of northwest Gansu province, said on Friday that tests had revealed that levels of benzene, a carcinogen, measured . The official Xinhua news agency reported that oil had leaked from a pipeline owned by a local unit of state-controlled oil company China National Petroleum Corp. The government’s disclosure prompted residents to rush to buy bottled water in the city. Photos posted online showed hordes of shoppers loading cases of water into shopping carts. Officials said the Yellow River, a major waterway in the area, hadn’t been contaminated. Some 2.4 million people in the city were affected by the contaminated water, Xinhua reported. A spokesman for the oil company referred […]