Is anyone checking for toxic materials?
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Of the industrial parks that have been inundated for months, at least one is now dry and ready to be refurbished.
This is quite alarming, since it was not proper to carry out the pumping of the entire industrial park without proper procedures to check for hazardous chemical and toxic materials that may have contaminated some factories within the boundary of the industrial park when the flood water rushed in.
The proper way is to isolate suspected factories and carry out a controlled pumping, factory by factory, if found to be contaminated. The most likely suspects will be waste-treatment plants. We will end up with toxic materials being let out to the entire flood plain, and eventually into the gulf. I pointed this out to the Flood Relief Operations Centre a few weeks ago, but it fell on deaf ears as usual.
Vichit Phanumphai
Bangkok
