Experts have carried out a new health check on villagers living near a controversial gold mine to re-examine their exposure to heavy metals, after a previous study found hundreds of them had high levels of toxic substances in their blood.
Among the affected villagers are 70 children who had tested positive for harmful levels of the substances, mainly arsenic and manganese. This finding prompted the government to investigate the health problem, which villagers blame on Akara Resources Plc's mining activities on the border of Phichit, Phitsanulok and Phetchabun provinces in northern Thailand.
Experts had to examine the health of residents in the area a second time to make sure a government panel looking into the problem had "a correct and precise result" from the tests, said Smith Tungkhasamit, lecturer of Rangsit University's College of Social Innovation.
The panel, which is made up of state officials, soldiers, scholars and representatives of villagers and the company, is gathering information from the three provinces to address the problem.
"We expect to know the results in the next one or two months," Mr Smith said Sunday.
In November last year, his university and the Central Institute of Forensic Science collected blood samples from 730 villagers who live near the gold mine in Phichit, and found more than half of them had high levels of arsenic and manganese in their blood.
The results sparked worry among residents and when the experts conducted the latest check-up over the weekend, a large crowd of villagers, queued up for testing.
More than 250 villagers turned up on the first day of health tests. The experts estimated that number would have risen to 600 at the end of their check-up period in tambon Thai Dong in Phetchabun's Wang Pong Sunday.
Mali Suwan, a resident in tambon Khao Chet Luk in Phichit's Thap Khlo district, took her family members including her two-year-old son for the check-up. Her son had been earlier found to have high levels of manganese in his body.
Mr Smith said children with high levels of manganese and arsenic in their system need immediate treatment to prevent a serious impact on their growth and their risk of suffering from cancer and the neurological disease, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.
Ms Mali said her family did not know where the heavy metal exposure came from but geographically "my house is just about 300 metres away from the gold mine", she said.
Akara has insisted it correctly followed mining regulations and never discharged any toxic substances into the environment.
The company, a 48%-owned subsidiary of Australia-based Kingsgate Consolidated Ltd, owns the Chatree mining complex in the three provinces.
A source from Akara said the company had not been informed about blood tests for villagers living near the gold mining site in Pichit province, which was considered to be breaching the agreement of the panel.