A judges' quorum under the Central Administrative Court will soon conduct an inspection around Suvarnabhumi Airport to hear noise generated by aircraft engines, a community leader said yesterday.
Wanchart Manatham-sombat said the period for the on-site inspection was scheduled for between 10pm and 5am. The date for the inspection has not yet been decided.
The Court will then reach a verdict in response to the resident's petition lodged on November 21 complaining about excessive noise.
He said the judges had heard his group's complaint and the residents' request that all airliners landing and taking off between the late night period should use Don Muang airport instead.
Wanchart said his group had never asked the Airports of Thailand (AoT) to ban flights from taking off and landing at Suvarnabhumi, countering an AoT statement that doing so would cost it Bt2 billion a day demanded by airliners.
The petition accused several government agencies of negligence for failing to regulate noise control. It also requested both technical and administrative protective measures against the noise.
Meanwhile, King Mong-kut's Institute of Technology Lat Krabang revealed yesterday dust particles had increased in a 15km radius from the airport a year after it opened.
If no measures were implemented to tackle the growing problem, the situation could worsen in 25 years, and affect the health of nearby residents, it said.
Dr Preecha Yupapin, a lecturer from the institute's Department of Applied Physics, said the institute and US experts had recently surveyed installed dust particle inspection devices around the airport and found an increase in the amount of particles.
The dust had increased by 0.1 per cent, which was not a dangerous level, because rainfall had cleaned the dust from the air. However, if the problem remained with no solutions, problems would occur in the next 25 years, he said.
Meanwhile, Bangkok's Silom, Sukhumvit and Yaowarat roads were detected with 0.6 per cent of dust particles - which posed a danger to peoples' health, he said.
Preecha said the dust mostly resulted from vehicle exhausts, which could be solved by installing exhaust-screening devices or better engine maintenance to avoid long-term problems that would affect nearby residents' respiratory systems.
The team also joined
with AIS to study the impact of dust particles on cell-phone signals and found that the 0.1 per cent increase in particles did not affect the analogue signals but that 0.5 per cent and above did, Preecha said.
