Marco Peluso, the lead author of the study, said it would be rare to see these levels of genetic damage in the West.
The main problem appears to be air pollution. The Thai pollution control department reported in September that it had found nine types of carcinogenic compounds in the air around Map Ta Phut.
In March, an initial court decision from the lawsuit by the 27 villagers declared Map Ta Phut a “pollution control zone,” obliging the authorities to measure soil and water quality regularly and to come up with a plan to reduce pollution if it is too high.
The real sting for companies, however, came in September, when another court ruled in a related lawsuit that 76 projects, most of them under construction, should immediately stop work because they were not in compliance with environmental provisions in the country’s new Constitution. The decision was upheld by a higher court early this month for all but 11 of the projects.
Among the companies affected are Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant; Aditya Birla Chemicals, an Indian conglomerate; BlueScope Steel of Australia; and two dozen companies belonging to PTT, the Thai energy giant.
Lawyers for the companies say the most galling aspect of the injunction is that they could not possibly comply with the law because detailed regulations have yet to be written, a problem that the government acknowledges.
The generals who carried out Thailand’s 2006 military coup promulgated a new Constitution that strengthened environmental law, requiring detailed studies before the approval of any project that causes “serious impact” to the environment or people’s health.
But “serious” was never defined and specific guidelines for companies were never drawn up, partly because government officials have been distracted by continuing political turmoil.
“Right now, companies don’t know which way to turn,” said Sivapong Viriyabusaya, a partner at the law firm Baker and McKenzie in Bangkok, which is representing companies affected by the injunction. “They want to comply, but they cannot because there are no rules.”
Srisuwan, the lawyer who won the injunction, is unapologetic about the potential economic effects of the decision.
“I don’t care about investors,” he said. “I don’t care about losing employment and the economy. I just care that people’s lives will be protected.”
The frustration is echoed by Noi Jaitang, a 70-year-old fruit farmer. Over the past two decades, Noi says, he has lost six members of his family to cancer. Now his wife has a cancerous tumor below her left eye. In October, Noi walked barefoot to Bangkok — about 200km away — to protest the pollution, which he blames for the deaths.
“It’s not that I want to burn the factories down,” he said. “We just want to be able to live together.”
The government says it is moving as quickly as it can to pass the requisite laws that would allow the injunction to be lifted, but Srisuwan calls this lawsuit only the “tip of the iceberg.”
There are 181 other factories in Thailand that are not complying with the new Constitution, including paper, steel and petroleum companies, he says.
“I will file lawsuits against all of them,” Srisuwan said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY NICE POJANAMESBAANSTIT
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