Toxic Thailand rivers pinned on Myanmar mines

CHIANG RAI, Thailand – A sprawling new mine is gouged into the lush rolling hills of north-east Myanmar, where civil war has weakened the government’s already feeble writ, and pollution levels are rising downstream in Thailand.

The complex is one of around a dozen extraction operations that have sprung up in Shan state since around 2022, in territory controlled by the United Wa State Army (UWSA),one of conflict-racked Myanmar’s largest and best-equipped ethnic armed groups.

A few kilometres away across the border, locals and officials in Thailand believe toxic waste is washing downstream from the mines into the Kok River, which flows through the kingdom’s far north on its way to join the mighty Mekong.

Thai authorities say they have detected abnormally high arsenic levels in their waterways, which could pose a risk to aquatic life and the people further up the food chain.

The price fisherman Sawat Kaewdam gets for his catch has fallen by almost half, he says, because locals fear contamination.

“They say, ‘There’s arsenic. I don’t want to eat that fish’,” he told AFP.

Tests in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai by a government pollution agency found levels of the toxic element as high as 49 micrograms per litre (mcg/l) of river water – nearly five times international drinking water standards.

Experts say that while the effects on human health would not be visible immediately, the fish-heavy local diet risks a cumulative impact over several years.

“We already know where the contamination is coming from,” says fisherman Mr Sawat. “They should go fix it at the source.”

Fivefold rise

Ms Pianporn Deetes, campaign director of the International Rivers NGO, blames the arsenic levels on Shan state’s unlicensed mines, which operate outside any regulation or control by the central government.

It was Thailand’s “largest-ever case of