Professor John Robertson OBA

In March 2001, independent researchers, commissioned by local residents living near Bradwell nuclear power station in Essex, published Cancer Mortality and Proximity to Bradwell Nuclear Power Station in Essex, 1995-99; Preliminary results showing:

substantial excess mortality risks, particularly from breast cancer in women who had lived in wards adjacent to the river Blackwater. This finding was similar to the findings of earlier studies on coastal populations near the Irish Sea and near the Hinkley Point nuclear site in Somerset.²

Soon after, local authority researchers criticised the above research and with access to statistics denied to the first group, insisted:

no evidence of any statistically significant increases in cancer in any ward in the study area and that the risks of cancer in populations living in annular areas described by circles around the nuclear site of radii 4, 10 and 17km around the plant showed no association with proximity to the plant.³

A year later, the first researchers revisited their findings and accepted some errors but stated:

there is no difference in the overall result, as we shall show.

Two results are immediate. First the corrected files make the estuary effect more apparent, since the Maldon wards now have more breast cancer deaths after the correction, and second, the effect is reinforced after the inclusion of the two extra years 2000 and 2001.⁴

and now claim:

Analysis of the corrected file for 1995-99 for the 26 ward area confirms the existence of significantly raised breast cancer mortality in wards which border the mud flats and creeks of the river Blackwater compared with wards which do not. This finding is reinforced slightly by the correction. Thus we see that the Blackwater estuary wards have (Table 4) 58% more breast cancer deaths than the non-Blackwater wards.⁵

In the full research report the authors reveal deliberate attempts by the local authority researchers to:

cover up a significant health problem and its source. ⁶

They conclude with damning comments which reinforce what I have written repeatedly about the importance of being deeply sceptical of official statements downplaying the risks of nuclear energy in Southern Scotland:

Ever since the 1983 discovery of the Sellafield (Seascale) leukaemia cluster it has become increasingly apparent to people living near nuclear sites that the epidemiological examination of radiation risk has been the subject of bias and cover-up at a very high level. It is also clear to these people that the reassurances they are given by the organisations who are paid to protect their health are worthless. If the truth about radiation and health is to be discovered, then accurate mortality and incidence data must be discovered, and statistical and epidemiological analysis should be undertaken by environmental groups funded by government, as well as by establishment groups. However, in recent years regional Cancer Registries have intensified restrictions on releasing incidence data, withholding figures which, according to their own Guidelines, ought to be available on request. The notable exception is that in 1995 the Wales Cancer Registry released its entire small area cancer incidence database to Green Audit – an event which was followed swiftly by closure of the WCR and a complex of data destruction and denial which COMARE signally failed to investigate in an even handed fashion.

There is not a level playing field in this debate. On one side there are small independent environmental research groups working under difficult conditions with inadequate information being attacked by the establishment and funded at a pathetic level by groups of local citizens. On the other side are the weighty government organisations with budgets of millions of pounds and departments full of qualified researchers.

It is to be welcomed that the opposition or ‘dialogical’ approach to examining risk in this area has now been accepted and partly put into practice in the new CERRIE committee. This approach has the capacity to deal with the scientific advice problem. However, the affair of breast cancer near Bradwell shows that there is a large trust deficit remaining in this area, associated with the internal operations of SAHSU, the Cancer Registries and COMARE. This is not an isolated affair: similar attacks, denials, cover-ups and shenanigans have occurred following Green Audit studies of cancer on the Welsh and Irish coasts and near Hinkley Point and Oldbury nuclear power stations. There is also the problem of the funding of citizen groups who wish to have an independent analysis of the situation, and the release of data to these groups to make such studies possible. The present situation is unacceptable.⁷

Sources:

1. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://llrc.org/llrc/health/subtopic/bradrep5.pdf
2. ibid page 2
3. ibid page 2
4. ibid page 3
5. ibid page 8
6. ibid page 10
7. ibid pages 10-11