Professor John Robertson OBA
From Fox News yesterday:
ST. LOUIS – A St. Louis doctor is looking into cancer rates across the region, trying to figure out why he’s seeing more younger patients. One of his younger patients was Dre Bergeson, a loving wife to her husband, Darryl, and mother to their 8-year-old son, Finn.
“She was kind, compassionate, and loving, always thinking about everyone else but herself, even through the diagnosis,” Darryl Bergeson said.
He said Dre began having heartburn and pain in August of last year. She had a CT scan in September.
“There was a large mass on her kidney. After that, she had surgery. Kidney and spleen removed in October. At the end of October, she thought everything was gone,” Bergeson said.
Just two weeks after Dre turned 37 and right before Christmas, life turned upside down.
“Chromophobe renal cell carcinoma. I never thought I would know that. It was aggressive, and it just didn’t stop,” Bergeson said. “It was after our doctor looked at it and figured it out and was like, there is no way you should have this cancer right here.”
The young mother and wife lost her battle to cancer on April 15. Darryl said they had a sendoff for her at their home that they spent two years building together, a home Dre got to live in for just six months.
Dre’s doctor is Dr. Gautum Agarwal, a urologic oncologist with Mercy. He said he’s seeing a trend in rare cases.
“These patients were younger and were being diagnosed with sometimes more aggressive and more rare types of tumors and they happened to be coming from, you know, Coldwater Creek or Weldon Spring, and I noticed this trend was occurring,” Agarwal said.
https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/doctor-sees-a-trend-in-young-st-louis-cancer-patients/
Surely there is nothing so dangerous in Scotland?
It’s far far worse.
The Sellafield Nuclear Waste Re-processing plant in Cumbria, a short distance from the Scottish border does not leech radioactivity directly into the water courses of Scotland but it does leak in the coastal flows that wash north along the Scottish coast and does emit airborne particles on the prevailing winds north and north-east into Scotland.
I’ve written about this many times before and so what follows may not be of interest to regulars however, given that only a few hundred from the tens of thousands seeing the social media posts, read the full report, I think it’s worth repeating:
In the Guardian 24 February 2025, this:
Sellafield has said nearly £3bn in new funding is “not enough” and bosses are now examining swingeing cuts, prompting fears over jobs and safety at the vast nuclear waste dump.
Sellafield’s chief executive, Euan Hutton, has told staff that the funding was “not enough” to carry out planned works, leaving bosses to make “difficult decisions” over spending, sources told the Guardian.
The public spending watchdog has said the ultimate cost of cleaning up Sellafield is expected to rise to £136bn, causing tensions with the Treasury as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, attempts to tighten public spending and spur growth.
In 2023, the Guardian’s Nuclear Leaks investigation revealed a string of safety concerns at the site – from issues with alarm systems to problems staffing safety roles at its toxic ponds – as well as cybersecurity failings, radioactive contamination and allegations of a toxic workplace culture.
Europe’s most hazardous industrial site has previously been described by a former UK secretary of state as a “bottomless pit of hell, money and despair”.
Why does it matter so much that radioactive leaks from Sellafield arrive so quickly and so frequently on Scotland’s coast and in her air?
Scotland’s cancer incidence level is much higher than the average in every part of world
Two recent reports in the National (links below), by Ayr MP Allan Dorans, have exposed levels of radioactivity in seafood, other wildlife and in river estuary sediment, from the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria, described recently in the Guardian as ‘Europe’s most toxic nuclear site‘. These were far above levels considered safe by the UK after the Chernobyl power station leaks in the Ukraine or the by the EU after the Fukushima power station leaks in Japan.
Allan Dorans in his constituency. Pic: Gordon Terris/Newsquest
The reports did not, however, consider the level of cancer incidence in Scotland compared with other parts of the world. First from Public Health Scotland in 2023:
Cancer incidence in Scotland, age-adjusted rates and 95% confidence intervals (CI) of expected rates,* 2010-2021
The rate, or risk, of new cancers also increased to 644 per 100,000 (an increase of 3.1% compared with 2019) and was higher than expected from the long-term trend.
Imagine these were drug cases. Would our media want to know how they compare with the rest of the world? Just a bit. ‘Drug capital of Europe!!‘
Note: Cancer cases rather than cancer deaths are a better measure of the risk from pollution of the environment. Scotland’s superior NHS is, no doubt, compensating for what follows.
From the World Health Organisation in 2022:
The average level of cancer cases in Europe is only 280 per 100 000 compared with 640 in Scotland. In North America, it’s 364.7 and in Oceania (Australia, NZ), it’s 409. In Asia and Africa, I feel sure, detection rates are even lower due to ‘third-world’ health provision.
Scotland is clearly the cancer capital of the whole world. Why is that not news?
And England, most of it further way from Sellafield and Trident than most Scots are? From the Gov UK site, the rate is 540 per 100 000, also very high globally but significantly lower than in Scotland at 640.
With the most dangerous radioactive plant in Europe at Sellafield in Cumbria, only miles from the border, with the experimental nuclear facility at Dounreay in Caithness, with UK and for some time, US, nuclear submarines and missiles based only 35-40 miles from Glasgow and sailing along the West of Scotland coastline, and with two major power stations at Hunterston and Torness, both within the densely populated central belt, Scotland has been exposed to large-scale and largely unknown risks for 70 years now.
While no government-funded scientists will ever admit to any link between the contamination and cancer cases, the onus is not on us but on them to prove there is none.
And before you say it – Scots smoke more? No they don’t.
15% of Scots smoke. Fewer than in most European countries. See this:
Links and sources:
- https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/04/sellafield-money-europe-toxic-nuclear-site-cumbria-safety
- https://www.thenational.scot/politics/24044322.allan-dorans-scottish-labours-support-nuclear-fuel-poses-risk
- https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/cancer-incidence-in-scotland/cancer-incidence-in-scotland-to-december-2021
- https://gco.iarc.fr/today/en/dataviz/bars?types=0_1&mode=population&key=asr&sort_by=value1
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/312961/new-cancer-cases-rate-england-age-gender/#:~:text=Cancer%20is%20an%20aggregation%20of,excluding%20non%2Dmelanoma%20skin%20cancer
- https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-health-survey-2022-volume-1-main-report/pages/11/#:~:text=As%20noted%20above%2C%20in%202022,%25%20and%2013%25%20respectively).
- https://www.euronews.com/health/2023/08/14/smoking-in-europe-which-countries-are-the-most-and-least-addicted-to-tobacco-and-vaping#:~:text=According%20to%20data%20compiled%20by,smoked%20fewer%20than%2020%20units.
Evidence of the Risk to Scotland from Sellafield
In the Guardian in December 2023, the above map, and this:
Sellafield, Europe’s most hazardous nuclear site, has a worsening leak from a huge silo of radioactive waste that could pose a risk to the public, the Guardian can reveal.
Concerns over safety at the crumbling building, as well as cracks in a reservoir of toxic sludge known as B30, have caused diplomatic tensions with countries including the US, Norway and Ireland, which fear Sellafield has failed to get a grip of the problems.https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-site-leak-could-pose-risk-to-public
BBC Scotland today is not reporting this but rather is pushing against the Scottish Government’s manifesto commitment to end the use of nuclear power, as we produce far more green energy than we can consume. There’s a no-brainer you’d think even Labour could get.
However, that map immediately prompted a quick reaction in me.
That plume of radiation just catching my birthplace of Duns near the border has been driven by a fairly neat little South-westerly, to only expand as it gets to Norway, but the prevailing winds in South-west Scotland are not so neatly defined.
See these wind roses for my hometown of Ayr and for nearby Glasgow:
The wind often blows from SSW and even at times from due South meaning that Sellafield radiation pollution could cover much of Scotland long before, and more concentratedly than, it reaches Norway. The USA and Ireland seem to have far less reason to worry than we do.
Water flows too, put Scotland most in harm’s way. See this:
It’s fairly clear where a leak into the Irish Sea from Sellafield (S) is going.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
I guess this is also relevant from the Guardian today
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/22/revealed-uranium-from-uk-nuclear-fuel-factory-dumped-into-protected-ribble-estuary
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The Graun reporting about England, they wouldn’t dare report the facts about Scotland…they are a British establishment paper.
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Not sure I follow your point.
The Prof’s article is making the point that radioactive leakage etc into the sea or air from Sellafield finds it way up the coast to Scotland.
The Guardian article is about a uranium processing plant near Preston dumping their radioactive waste into the Ribble Estuary. Preston is not that far south of Sellafield and the Ribble Estuary flows into the same body of water as SeClanfield leaks. Therefore this radioactivity will aalso find its way north to Scotland.
The Guardian article did not make that point explicitly but the fact it was reporting on this at all allows you to join the dots.
I did not even know that such a processing plant in the Preston area. Sellafield tends to overshadow everything nuclear related. Adding this info to what is known about the dangers to Scotland from Selafield.
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