Parishes lobby Blears over incinerator (From The Oxford Times)

The Health Protection Agency haven't bothered to examine any rates of illness or premature deaths at electoral ward level around any incinerator & are therefore unable to give any opinion on whether or not incinerator emissions harm health.

The Environment Agency don't examine any data either, but they do ask the Director of Public Health at the Primary Care Trust where the incinerator is to be sited whether or not the incinerator will have a significant impact on human health.

The PCT will have a contract with the Health Protection Agency to get "expert" advice on matters such as air pollution and will ask the Health Protection Agency for advice & guidance and the HPA will tell the PCT that there'll be no health problems.

The PCT will not bother to check whether or not the HPA's advice is correct and will write to the Environment Agency to tell them "no significant impact on human health" and that's when you'll get your incinerator.

Only the Surrey Mirror and the Dorking Advertiser have reported the failure of the Health Protection Agency in their articles "Chill wind over fumes from incinerator" and "Incinerator fury as bosses admit to no health checks", both articles 22 May 2008.

Capel Action Group were horrified to learn that the HPA hadn't bothered to check relevant data and that's how the two above articles appeared. It's a shame that they are no longer online.

Kind regards,

Michael Ryan,
Shrewsbury

The Health Protection Agency haven't bothered to examine any rates of illness or premature deaths at electoral ward level around any incinerator & are therefore unable to give any opinion on whether or not incinerator emissions harm health.

The Environment Agency don't examine any data either, but they do ask the Director of Public Health at the Primary Care Trust where the incinerator is to be sited whether or not the incinerator will have a significant impact on human health.

The PCT will have a contract with the Health Protection Agency to get "expert" advice on matters such as air pollution and will ask the Health Protection Agency for advice & guidance and the HPA will tell the PCT that there'll be no health problems.

The PCT will not bother to check whether or not the HPA's advice is correct and will write to the Environment Agency to tell them "no significant impact on human health" and that's when you'll get your incinerator.

Only the Surrey Mirror and the Dorking Advertiser have reported the failure of the Health Protection Agency in their articles "Chill wind over fumes from incinerator" and "Incinerator fury as bosses admit to no health checks", both articles 22 May 2008.

Capel Action Group were horrified to learn that the HPA hadn't bothered to check relevant data and that's how the two above articles appeared. It's a shame that they are no longer online.

Kind regards,

Michael Ryan,
Shrewsbury

Don't waste time with Hazel Blears who's just given green light to Nottingham incinerator:

Nottingham Evening Post: 100,000-tonne go-ahead for eastcroft incinerator
Nottingham Evening Post (England) - Monday, February 16, 2009
Plans to expand Eastcroft incinerator have been given the go-ahead by Secretary of State Hazel Blears.

The decision comes after Waste Recycling Group (WRG) appealed against Nottingham City Council's refusal of the proposals.

The idea is to add an extra 100,000-tonnes-a-yea
r capacity to the London Road plant.

The appeal has now been allowed and permission granted by Ms Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, subject to a number of conditions.

In a report, decision officer Julian Pitt said: "The Secretary of State considers that the proposal would not have a harmful effect on the regeneration of Southside, Eastside or Waterside Regeneration Areas, or the city as a whole.

"She concludes that the proposal would be compatible with the aims of sustainable waste management... and would not be in conflict with the development plan, local planning guidance or emerging Regional Spatial Strategy.

"The Secretary of State concludes that there are no material considerations to cause her to decide other than in accordance with the development plan." He added that Ms Blears considered the incinerator - or energy-from-waste facility - would not present any material risk to health and incineration would divert waste from landfill.

The decision means WRG can build a third line of incineration, and increase the total capacity to 250,000 tonnes of waste a year.

The plans also include an external facelift, including new cladding and screens, as well as an additional flue-gas treatment plant.

Robert Asquith, planning and estates manager for WRG said: "WRG is delighted with the decision. We have worked hard to deliver the best possible scheme for Nottingham." He said it would significantly reduce their reliance on landfill, help the fight against climate change and generate more renewable energy through the district heating scheme.

Nottingham Against Incineration and Landfill (NAIL) have been campaigning against the incinerator for over seven years. Chairman Jon Beresford said: "The decision is a real blow for the people of Nottingham, our environment and for democracy. Residents said no in a 3,000-signature petition." He said the Government had overruled "this local, unanimous decision to support the profits of big business."

I wonder how many people in Oxfordshire were bothered about polluting industries being sited in "poor areas" as reported in The Guardian, 20 May 1999?

Perhaps the present game plan is to equalise matters by poisoning those who aren't poor?

The Guardian: Poisoning those who are poor: Filthy factories and toxic dumps are sited well away from rich areas
Guardian, The (London, England) - Thursday, May 20, 1999
Why do the poor die younger than the rich? There are many explanations, and most of them involve the fecklessness of the poor. They eat the wrong food, smoke too much and exercise too little. Recently we learnt that they may not be solely to blame for their own misfortunes: cancer treatment, the Cancer Research Campaign revealed last month, is far shoddier for people on low incomes. But while all these factors are doubtless important, one of the most deadly killers has been largely overlooked. The poor die younger than the rich, new research suggests, because they are being systematically poisoned.

Dr Dick van Steenis is a retired GP who, in 1994, was asked to look at the possible health effects of pollution from power stations in south Wales. He struck upon the simple device of mapping the use of asthma inhalers by primary school children. He was astonished to discover that, before long, he was able to predict the number of asthma patients to within 1 or 2%, simply by measuring how far they lived from the nearest major source of pollution. In some villages, he found as many as 38% of four and five year olds using inhalers. He started deploying his simple test in other parts of the country. In Lancashire, he discovered that six times as many inhalers were used downwind of the cement works he studied than were used upwind. This was, he found, hardly surprising. While government monitoring equipment in the plant recorded an impressive though scarcely credible reading of minus 17 microgrammes of smoke particles per cubic metre of air, unofficial monitors in a nearby school playground found levels as high as 485 microgrammes, or nine times the government's generous 'safe limit'.

Van Steenis found that where coal is being dug out of opencast pits in south Glamorgan, the residents are suffering from respiratory problems very similar to those which afflicted the miners who used to work in deep pits. In Lanarkshire, he discovered that asthma levels dropped back towards normal soon after the quarry he was studying closed. Asthma is just the first and most obvious symptom of poisoning by pollution. Van Steenis began to realise that much of the difference in disease rates in Britain could be explained simply by means of where people live.

While the number of Britain's factories has declined sharply in the past 40 years, the range of pollutants we produce has greatly increased. The main reason is that we are generating more waste. It is either being dumped in landfill sites (where pollutants can react with each other to produce more deadly ones) or being incinerated. Since 1991, companies have been allowed to burn toxic waste to power industrial processes. It is not hard to see why they should want to do this: while coal costs some pounds 26 a tonne, they are paid to take poisonous chemicals away. But because the chemicals they burn are classified as 'fuel', rather than 'waste', they are not required to fit proper scrubbing equipment to their chimneys. In 1998 the United Kingdom's largest factories released more than 10,000 tonnes of cancer-causing chemicals into the air.

The result, says Van Steenis , is an explosive increase in certain diseases. He links the rise of endometriosis - a condition now afflicting up to 10% of British women - to emissions of dioxins, which are common toxic by-products of incineration. Hypothyroidism seems to be linked to volatile organic pollutants. Fluorides are associated with certain forms of arthritis and rheumatism, while heavy metals have been blamed for cancer, heart disease and strokes.

In the villages around two toxic waste dumps in south Wales, infant mortality levels (at 12 per 1,000 births) approach those of Belarus in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. Pollution, in short, is becoming one of Britain's major health hazards.

It is hard to believe that these chemicals would have been allowed to spread so far and so fast if most of the people they poisoned were rich and powerful. But a recent study by Friends of the Earth shows how pollution in Britain has become the companion of poverty: 662 of the UK's largest factories are in places in which the average household income is less than pounds 15,000. Five are in places whose average income is more than pounds 30,000.

Where poverty is most concentrated, so are the poisons. Seal Sands on Teesside contains 17 of Britain's most polluting factories, and has an average income of pounds 6,200.

Van Steenis 's work could go a long way towards explaining why three times as many men in social class five die each year than in social class one. Ironically, many of the industrial processes which are poisoning them result from consumption patterns in which the poor cannot participate. It is not just the fecklessness of the poor that is killing them, but also the fecklessness of the rich.