Relief of Producers of Bottled Drinking water and Ice in Huge Flood Areas in 2011-2012

Abstract

       The severe lood in Thailand during 2011-2012 had an efect on shortage of drinking water, as a result, most people preferred the bottled drinking water. Also, the producers of bottled drinking water and ice in lood areas had problem on the contamination of chemicals and pathogens in water source that afected the quality of products. Accordingly, with purpose of hurried relief of business owners and protection of consumers, the Department of Medical Sciences (DMSc), in cooperation with Thai Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Provincial Health Oice (PHO) and Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) launched a project to relieve producers of bottled drinking water and ice in huge lood areas during November 2011 – September 2012. The project was divided into three phases. In phase 1, the DMSc organized a workshop for providing details of the project and knowledge of the Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) to the cooperators. In phase 2, the samples of bottled drinking water and ice from the lood-impacted producers were collected by health authorities (FDA, PHO and BMA) and were sent to laboratories of the DMSc for analysis according to the Notiication of Ministry of Public Health for bottled drinking water and ice. In phase 3, the analytical reports were submitted to the health authorities for considering provision of guidance of quality improvement to the producers with non-complying results. Subsequently, their products were sampled and analyzed. For the irst analysis, total of 589 samples were tested and the results revealed that from 510 samples of bottled drinking water, 101 samples or 19.8% failed to meet the standard whereas from 79 samples of ice, 27 samples or 34.2% failed. For the analysis after quality improvement, 19 samples or 31.7% of 60 samples of bottled drinking water failed to meet the standard whereas from 17 samples of ice, 9 samples or 52.9% failed. However, in the second analysis the results showed that the number of samples met the criteria increased form the irst analysis at 15.4%. In conclusion, this cooperating project enabled the lood-impacted producers to rapidly recover from lood crisis and to run their business continuously and efectively. Furthermore, the consumers were protected from the health risk.