Villagers resigned to enduring sickness caused by a lead contaminated creek

Claiming lack of help from the authorities, the residents of Lower Klity Village in Kanchanaburi’s Thong Pha Phum District say they have no choice but to endure chronic sickness.
The cause is lead poisoning and they blame a nearby contaminated creek to be the source of their troubles.
Here, the village people say, is where the problems start:
It was another hot afternoon in Lower Klity Village. Wichai Nasuankanok – a15-year-old boy who identified himself as nine years old – rushed down to the Klity Creek and jumped into the clear cool water.
“Come down and play in the water,” Wichai shouted to his friends with a smile as he swam and dived in the creek.
This was scene normal in other riverside villages, but Klity Creek is different. It remains severely contaminated with lead slag that exposes the water and aquatic animals in the creek to very high levels of lead – so bad health workers say it is totally dangerous to swim, drink or catch anything from the creek.
The source of the deadly pollution was a lead-mining operation upstream that illegally drained the waste water from the mine directly into the creek for more than 10 years.
However, the children like Wichai, together with many adult residents of the village, still use the creek as normal for bathing, washing and even for their food and water supply.
Manumia Thongphaphumjared, a 47-year-old housewife, disclosed that she often used the creek water for drinking. The result was a childbirth problem due to lead poisoning, which almost killed her and left her son with a brain problem.
“We know the creek is contaminated and harmful to our health. However, we have no option but to use the creek water because of the scarcity in our mountain pipe water resource,” Manumia said.
“The creek is very important to us. It is poisonous but we must depend on it,”
Tanakrit Thongfa, Klity Youth Group coordinator revealed that such a desperate situation was because his village had not received proper help from the authorities in any way.
“The Public Health Ministry deployed a full medical team once to our village around 17 years ago. They came to collect the people’s blood samples – but never revealed the results or advised the people on how to avoid further lead poisoning,” Tanakrit said.
“The creek recovery operation by the Pollution Control Department was very slow and ineffective in cleaning the creek. They also failed to help us find other safe sources of water and food. We are more or less dependent on our own [efforts].”
He disclosed that the lack of authorities’ attention to solve the problem in such a marginal community led to the healthcare and education problem of the villagers.
“Many children in the village have an IQ problem due to the effect of lead poisoning on their brains. This is why many children suffer intellectual deficits, which leave them unable to catch up with other students and can force them out of school,” the young activist explained.
“They are losing the opportunity to have higher education that they should have,” he said. Wichai was one of the children who developed this problem. Examinations showed he had slower brain development than normal in a person of his age – and it interrupted his education.
It’s not just children who are affected. Wassana Nasuansawat, 53, also claims to be a victim of lead poisoning; her eyes went blind after long exposure to lead from drinking and eating fish from the creek.
“My eyes became more and more blurred and then turned dark in the course of around 10 years. During this time, no official agencies came to help me. I only got help from one of the journalists who visited me and took me to the hospital in Bangkok for treatment, but it was too late to save my vision,” Wassana said.
According to Ramathibodi Poison Centre, lead can cause sickness in many of the body’s systems because it replaces essential metals in organs, leaving them unable to properly function.
It was also confirmed by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention that lead toxicity relates to lower IQ in children.
In order to turn things around, Tanakrit said his group has produced a short film about learning problems among the village’s children. They worked closely with ThaiPBS to cover the citizen journalist news report, a way to bring community attention to the village problems.
“We hope people out there will understand how bad our situation is and make changes. We are not looking for anything more than a brighter future for our next generation, so that they can live in a healthy environment and live in harmony with nature, like our forefathers did,” he said.