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Leaks and peaks
"Error of judgement"
kills babies
Increased infant
mortality after radioactive leak points to fault line in radiation
risk model
A BBC Inside Out documentary
broadcast yesterday (29th February 2008) features new
research by Green Audit (sponsored by Stop Hinkley). Leaks of
radioactivity from Hinkley Point nuclear power station near Burnham
on Sea, Somerset, UK in 1994 preceded a peak in infant mortality.
This is based on official health data.
Earlier studies in Burnham on Sea
showed increased breast cancer after the accident.
The first leak was caused by corroded
pipework. The second was caused by a failure to replace one part of
the suspect pipe. When prosecuted for this "error of judgement"
in 1995 station operators Nuclear Electric described the leaks as
"insignificant" and "at the bottom of the scale".
The conventional radiation risk model
predicts no discernible impact on cancer at such levels of exposure.
Infant mortality is not officially considered as an effect of
radioactive pollution.
Radiation is thought to
cause anomalies in the sex ratios of births — the proportion of
boy babies born compared with girls. Normally, in England and Wales
five percent more boy babies are born. The Green Audit report studied
sex ratios in the data for Burnham North, the ward nearest to the
most contaminated mud in the study area. The sex ratio was found to
be abnormal, with nineteen percent more boys born, similar to the
ratios found in the Hiroshima atom bomb studies.
To view the 10
minute BBC report go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/
Scroll down to find the icon titled "West" on the right
hand side. Click on the link Watch the
latest edition in full to run the video
on your computer. You can see Dr. Julia Verne, the current head of
cancer registrations in south west England, claiming she found
nothing when she re-tested the data "using the best methods".
Her predecessor, Dr. Derek Pheby, disagrees: "This is a serious
finding, and most unlikely to have arisen by chance. The likelihood
is that something happened environmentally at the beginning of the
period in question and it is very likely, although this would be
difficult to prove, that the accidental releases of radioactive
material in 1994 to which the authors [of the study] draw attention
is implicated in this. Clearly this is a serious matter, which
warrants further investigation. The South West Public Health
Observatory [formerly the SW Cancer Registry] ought to take this
seriously.”
Julia Verne has denied the existence of
radiation effects before and had ignored refutations of her flawed
analyses. Curiously, after her earlier reports, she was appointed to
COMARE, the UK Government's advisory Committee on Medical Aspects of
Radiation in the Environment.
The Green Audit
study is on http://www.llrc.org/epidemiology/subtopic/infmort.pdf
A local newspaper
report of the 1995 trial of Nuclear Electric is on
http://www.llrc.org/epidemiology/subtopic/hinkleylocalnews201095.pdf
Stop Hinkley report
http://www.stophinkley.org/Press%20Releases/pr080229.htm
(Stop Hinkley sponsored the Green Audit study.)
Western
Daily Press report
http://www.westpress.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=145809&command=displayContent&sourceNode=145792&contentPK=20029238&moduleName=InternalSearch&formname=sidebarsearch
Informant: Richard Bramhall
