Sir, the big flooding in Thailand in 2011 is one of the problematic flooding in Asia. It
causes several destroying to many things in the disaster areas. An important concern is on
the effect on the setting with the radioactive elements usage. In Thailand, there are some
places with radioactive elements including to the university, hospital as well as radioactive
research center. Luckily, during the disaster period, there is no report on radioactive
elements leakage. The interesting focus is on the way that each setting protect itself from
flooding. In many places with small usage of radioactive elements, the replacing of the
radioactive substances and machines is done. The cases of hospital is very interesting, some
hospitals with radiotherapy unit were flooded but they previously replace the radioactive
elements and machine to the safe place. The more problematic place as the radiation
research center had to make more serious preventive means. The use of heavy big and high
giant barrier to protect the building was used and the good first structural plan of the
building helped a lot in prevention of the problem. However, there is the problem of
transportation of the radioactive element for using in medical purposes. This caused the
delay for treatment of many cancerous patients. Indeed, the flooding might be the cause of
uncontrolled distribution of radioactive elements and can be serious public health problem (1,
2). Although there is no problem in this disaster, it is suggested that any site should have
their own preventive protocol to correspond to the possible flooding and other disaster.
Joob B, Wiwanitkit V. Flooding in Thailand and the problem of radioactive elements leakage. Int J Radiat Res 2011; 9 (3) :207-0 URL: http://ijrr.com/article-1-809-en.html