Tests show 30% of Fang residents' blood highly contaminated
Subject: Workers, neighbours seen at risk
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2002 01:41:04 -0500
From: Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of
California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Published on
Nation Multimedia Group
Workers, neighbours seen at risk
Tests show 30% of Fang residents' blood highly contaminated
Unlike consumers, whether they eat oranges or not, residents around the orange orchards in Chiang Mai's Fang district face a serious pesticide crisis. Three out of every 10 of them have been found to have high levels of chemical contaminants in their blood.
Over the past four years, officials from Fang's district
office and
They have found that 16.05 per cent of 1,015 people tested have blood containing the chemicals at "risky" levels, while another 12.11 per cent were at the "unsafe" level, according to a 2001 report from Fang Hospital.
"We cannot conclude the contamination is from orange orchards as most of the residents are farmers and they use pesticides on their own farms as well," Dr Narongdej Pipattanawong, director of Fang Hospital, explained. He did however concede that the huge orchards are among the major causes of the high levels of blood contamination.
The problem seemed to have been getting better since 1997, with the percentage of people contaminated gradually decreasing from 21.61 to 15.92 per cent, the proportion rose sharply to 28.16 per cent last year. The crisis has grown very fast following the aggressive growth of orange plantations in the area and nearby districts, Juthamas Jaikham of the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture Community (ISAC) said.
From Fang, plantations have expanded to Mae Ai, Chaiya Prakan and some areas of Mae Taeng and Phrao, according to Chiang Mai's agriculture office. Within the last 10 years and particularly in the past several years, the plantation area has increased rapidly, from 10,000 rai to 35,000 rai, an official said.
Apart from the health problems, without proper management by authorities, the plantations have quietly brought local residents other problems, such as negative environmental and social impacts, Juthamas said.
In Mae Ai's Mae Nawang area, the local primary health care unit recently conducted pesticide tests in drinking water sources for villages surrounded by orange orchards. Six of 16 local drinking water sources tested "unsafe to drink".
"It is a bad sign. The impact goes deep with the local residents," Juthamas said.
Villager Kasem Jantaphrom, 40, of Fang's Viang tambon, has a house and farm near three large orchards. He said he didn't know about the blood testing and the contamination. For him, the intolerable smell of chemicals from the orchards is his main problem.
"They spray each plot once a week and they have many plots. So we suffer every day. All we can do is go out if the smell comes at an unexpected time," he said.
According to Fang resident Joo Sangnor, the impact of the aggressive growth of the plantations goes beyond contamination. There are now conflicts over water, illegal encroachment on public land and forest areas by the giant plantations, as well as the use of illegal labour.
"They block the natural waterways to build their own reservoirs, then drain contaminated water into the community pond, which we use for tap water systems. They block public roads and they recently encroached on public forest areas," he said.
Most of the workers on orange plantations in Chiang Mai are
Shan refugees, a Chiang Mai-based refugee organisation said. In Fang alone,
there are as many as 15,000 Shan workers, amounting to 10 per cent of all Shan
refugees in
Fang District Chief Boonserm Kitjensuwan admitted the problems raised by the villagers were real, but he disagreed that the level of the problem was serious. Big firms should show more responsibility but they bring the district better economic conditions, he said.
"I believe the big companies have good management systems that should not cause serious environmental and health problems. Okay, the orchards might cause a problem with smell," he said.
"Land encroachment has a long history and is a complicated issue. Anyway, it is a responsibility of central authorities and beyond my authority," he said.
Juthamas said ISAC is now contacting academics in
The first of this two-part series appeared in yesterday's issue.
Kamol Sukin
THE NATION,CHIANG MAI
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