(351.3486) WISE Amsterdam - The plant, on north Humberside, Northeast England, was for many years one of the major sources of environmental ionizing radiation in Britain. Owned and managed by RTZ, the world's largest mining company, Capper Pass performed a unique - and uniquely pollutive - task. The plant operated not just as Europe's only primary tin smelter, but as the recycler of a devil's cauldron of heavy metals and radioactive wastes, including radium and uranium. It was the presence of polonium-210, however, spewing out of the company's 600-foot chimney into the surrounding countryside, which first alerted local people to something nasty.
A local district nurse in the mid-eighties began detecting extremely rare childhood leukemias among a relatively small population. Joined by a woman whose own small daughter had died of cancer, she set up HACC (Hull Action on child Cancers). HACC badgered and browbeat local and national politicians, regional and governmental health authorities, demanding a thorough investigation of the plant. After widespread publicity, including several TV and radio spots, the East Yorkshire Health Authority finally commissioned and investigation by the Scottish Universities Research and Reactor Centre. The Baxter report, as the resulting study was called, was released in early 1990 and raised dramatic concern not merely about internal conditions at Capper Pass, but the wholly inadequate standards of radiation control in the UK.
Neither the British government nor RTZ have admitted any connection between the regional cancer clusters and the operation of the smelter. Both have maintained a studied silence in the face of the report's claims that workers in British metallic industries (including the tin mines) have been exposed to levels of radiation many times higher than those acceptable in the nuclear industry itself. The death blow to Capper Pass was undoubtedly the miserable state of the tin industry which, since 1985, has been on the verge of collapse. Only a few months after the damning Baxter report was published, RTZ tried to put the plant on the market. Nobody would buy it.
As accusations persisted that Capper Pass couldn't clean up its act - while children continued to die - RTZ in early 1991 finally decided to close the plant down, throwing approximately 500 people out of work over the following months. Redundancy payments have been set at just over five million UK pounds, while decontamination costs are estimated at around 22 million pounds; clean-up is to be monitored by Lancaster University's Environmental Sciences Department.
HACC has expressed concern that, to date, no adequate means of monitoring future leukemias, or ill-health among the workforce has been set up - let alone a fund for proper compensation against future medical claims.
Sources:
- "A Review of Radioactivity in and Around the Capper Pass Smelter, Melton Works, North Humberside", by M.S. Baxter, B.W. East, A.B. MacKenzie and E.M. Scott, SURRC, 1990.
- Tin and Radiation, a report by Mine-watch, London 1990
- WISE News Communique 338, 14 Sept. 1990
- Hull Daily Mail 5 Feb. 1991
- Guardian 5 Feb. 1991.
Contacts: HACC, 4 Lime Tree Villas, Tweendykes Rd., Sutton-on-Hull, England; Partizans, 218 Liverpool Rd., London N1 ILE, tel: +44-71-609 1852, fax: +44-71-700 6189
Minewatch (same address as Partizans).
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |