Thai Flood Decontamination Balls are Great – If They Work
By Shibani Mahtani
- Shibani Mahtani/The Wall Street Journal
- Volunteers have gathered at a Bangkok shopping mall to make 100,000 'decontamination balls' that they say will kill germs in water.
Across Bangkok, residents are turning to microorganism-filled mudballs that proponents say can clean and disinfect the sewage-filled floodwaters now spreading across the capital city.
The only problem is, not everyone is sure they actually work.
Efforts to make and distribute the "Effective Micro-organism," or "EM" Balls have spread across the city, with volunteers gathering at Bangkok's Amarin Plaza mall and other sites in recent weeks to mold together hundreds of thousands of the balls for distribution into flooded areas. The tennis ball-shaped wonders are made out of a lumpy, sandy mixture of clay, rice husks, sand and microorganisms, and are believed to be capable of disinfecting five cubic meters of floodwater when dropped in. The balls are said to last up to a month, making them potentially ideal for sanitizing standing floodwaters that threaten to spread disease and infections.
Despite the initial excitement, though, some health experts are skeptical about their usefulness, particularly in waters as bacteria-filled as those that plague Thailand. "Since there would already be a massive natural bug population in the floodwater, the EM cultures would have to be used in significant quantity to allow their organisms to compete," said Dr. Maureen Birmingham, the World Health Organization's representative to Thailand. "This may become costly and with unknown benefit unless some controlled trials could be rapidly conducted to measure its efficacy." Dr. Birmingham added that while "Effective Micro-Organism" technology has claims of success in previous emergency situations – the Southeast Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, for example – there is little scientific data available to back up the claims that they'll work in the latest disaster.
Bloggers have also picked up on the debate over whether making so many mudballs is a noble effort or a feel-good distraction for Thais who have not had their houses and possessions destroyed by some of the worst floods to hit the country for decades. New Mandela, a well-known blog dedicated to Southeast Asia issues hosted by Australian National University posted a report entitled "EM balls — a flood hoax?" to open a discussion on the issue. One commenter posted a report from a group of academics at Chulalongkorn University alleging that the balls worsen water pollution by reducing oxygen levels in the water. Supporters of the balls, though, say they beat doing nothing and at least take an organic approach to solving a complex contamination problem that is growing as trash collection grinds to a halt in some areas and sewage services are compromised. Making the balls is also a way of demonstrating community support for the people who are affected.
"This is just one of the ways of sterilizing the water, but it is a way that is reachable and people can get involved," said Chai Srivikorn, Chairman of the Ratchaprasong Square Trade Association, which helped organize one of the events to make EM balls at Amarin Plaza last week. The group was able to pull in hundreds of volunteers over three days with the aim of producing 10,000 EM balls and was inspired by a broader initiative led by Thailand's king, known as the royal "self-sufficiency economy," which is aimed at creating a relatively self-sufficient Thailand.
The technology for the mudballs was first developed in Japan as part of a nature farming initiative. The balls have recently been tested in Penang, Malaysia, where they were used to clear murky water and prevent the growth of algae, though that's not quite the same thing as combating raw sewage and animal carcass-filled floodwaters. At the Amarin Plaza event last week, volunteers crowded the floors on several levels of the building, squeezing the clay and other ingredients tightly to form the mudballs, a task that takes about 10 to 15 minutes per ball. Volunteers were told that if the balls disintegrate too quickly in the water, they become useless.
"It is very tiring to make, my arms are already hurting," said Visara Pichedvanichok, a 23-year-old freelance architect. "This is a good thing to do with my free time, so many areas near my house are flooded and I want to help them in some way." She, like most of the other volunteers, found out about the program through the Internet.
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