News

Reuters 21 September 2017 | Photography by Kim Kyung-Hoon, Reporting by Minami Funakoshi.

Minamata, Japan – Shinobu Sakamoto was just 15 when she left her home in the southern Japanese fishing village of Minamata to go to Stockholm and tell the world of the horrors of mercury poisoning.

Forty-five years on, she is travelling again, this time to Geneva, to attend from Sunday a gathering of signatories to the first global pact to rein in mercury pollution.

Bangkok Post 20 September 2017  

DOA under fire for not following panel order

Consumer advocates called on the prime minister Tuesday to ban the use of two hazardous agricultural chemicals after the Department of Agriculture (DOA) passed the buck to the Industry Ministry, saying the department had no expertise in public health.

The Nation 19 September 2017   

Environmental groups staged a nationwide protest against the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides for the sake of consumer safety.

More than 200 protesters from various environmental groups - including Greenpeace, the National Farmers Council, the National Health Assembly, and the Resources and Environment Network - gathered at Government House on Tuesday to hand over a petition to the government.

Bangkok Post 19 September 2017 | Apinya Wipatayotin

High levels of the toxic heavy metal mercury have been detected in people and the environment in eight provinces across the country where heavy industry, gold mining and coal-fired power plants are concentrated, according to a study.

The findings have raised fears over brain damage in newborn children.

By the end of the third week of gestation in humans, the foetal brain has already begun its formation and mercury poisoning during this early period can result in severe abnormalities of the brain and spinal cord.

18 September 2016 | EARTH and ARNIKA

BANGKOK/PRAGUE - Everyday food of hundreds of thousands people living in Thailand is contaminated with mercury in various fish species, study shows (1). This common dish ingredient in the Asian country often contains twice the amount of this toxic heavy metal than limits allow. The highest contamination was found in fish from the industrial areas, however, further located and less exposed regions are also vastly affected, even the national parks. “The medical and economic consequences of food source contamination and fishermen livelihood should be considered,” director of Thai non-governmental organization EARTH Penchom Saetang suggests.

The Guardian 18 September 2017 | Damian Carrington, Environment editor

Study finds excessive levels of the metal, which can seriously harm unborn children, in women from Alaska to Indonesia, due to gold mining, industrial pollution and fish-rich diets

Women of childbearing age from around the world have been found to have high levels of mercury, a potent neurotoxin which can seriously harm unborn children. The new study, the largest to date, covered 25 of the countries with the highest risk and found excessive levels of the toxic metal in women from Alaska to Chile and Indonesia to Kenya. Women in the Pacific islands were the most pervasively contamina

PRESS RELEASE 18 September 2017

(Göteborg, Sweden) Mercury, a neurotoxic metal, has been found in high levels across all global regions in women of reproductive age, according to a new study conducted by IPEN (a global public health & environment network) and Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI). Women in the Pacific Islands and in communities near gold mining sites in Indonesia, Kenya, and Myanmar were found to have average mercury levels many times higher than US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) health advisory levels.

Myanmar Times 14 September 2017 | Myat Moe Aung    

Local residents adversely affected by emissions from a coal mine project of Thai companies in Tanintharyi Region have urged the Thai authorities to take action against the firm, a local youth group told The Myanmar Times. 

Dear Honorable Judges Atsuo Nagano, Masayuki Nakayama and Takuya Hazui, Tokyo High Court

Dear Honorable JudgesYuko OTAKE, Zen-ichro UEMURA and Shingo YAMADA, Yokohama District Court

(13 SEP 2017) - We pay tribute to your important role in dispensing justice and protecting human rights under Japanese law.

We are organizations working on asbestos issues in our home countries and around the world in international solidarity. We campaign to achieve the elimination of asbestos-related diseases and justice for victims and their families.

The Nation 12 September 2017 | Pratch Rujivanarom

THAI OVERSEAS investors have been urged to respect human rights wherever they are doing business and work closely with the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

Agencies that oversee direct investment in other countries met yesterday with the NHRC to report on their progress relating to Cabinet resolutions issued on May 16, 2016 and May 2, 2017, which called for Thai foreign investors to respect and protect the human rights of local people.