I have lived in the Lake District for almost 40 years, the last 30 having been spent near the Irish Sea coast in West Cumbria. England. In the early 1970s, when, according to British Nuclear Fuels, radioactive discharges from the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant into the Irish Sea were 100 times higher than today, I regularly took my baby son to the silty beaches near the Sellafield plant. His favorite game was to cover himself in sand and mud, being hosed down with buckets of seawater and then starting all over again.
(509/10.5009) Janine Allis-Smith - Playing on the beaches seemed harmless fun, but was it? Looking back, I feel regret, guilt and anger. People were ignorant about radiation, but scientists had known since the late 1950s that, as part of a deliberate experiment, plutonium and other radioactive materials from the plants discharges were returning to and concentrating on our beaches and in our local environment. We were never told at the time.
In 1983 a television documentary exposed a high rate of childhood cancer in the village of Seascale, 10 times the national average which, according to scientists, could not have happened by chance and suggested that radioactivity from its nuclear neighbor, the Sellafield plant, was responsible. Widespread public and media uproar prompted an immediate government inquiry. Nine months later, at the age of 12, my son was diagnosed with leukemia. I blamed Sellafield, questioned the authorities, but met with official silence and hostility. I joined the local anti-Sellafield action group, Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment, first as a volunteer and later as a full-time campaigner on health issues. Luckily my son survived, but many children didn't.
For many Cumbrians, the damaging publicity about Sellafield, changed their traditional way of life. Walks along the coast, lazy sunny summer days on the beach, catching and eating local seafood, are no longer. Mothers do not talk openly about their fears and suspicions, particularly if a family member works at the plant. For Sellafield workers, disclosure of malpractices, public criticism or an unauthorised media interview will mean dismissal, offering little choice in an area with unemployment at a record high level and a life on state benefit the only alternative.
In 1992 two test cases selected from our group of 30 leukemia families took BNFL to the High Court in London, the most expensive civil compensation battle in British legal history. The two families lost, due to lack of support at that time for the "Gardner theory" (Sellafield fathers' high radiation exposure prior to conception, increases cancer risk in offspring). Those families who had hoped to put their case based on environmental contamination were not allowed to continue.
Ever since then Sellafield has declared itself "cleared", claims that radioactivity from Sellafield is not to blame and, by turning speculation into science, favors an as yet unidentified virus and the effects of population mixing as the cause. To date, radiation is still one of the only known causes of the disease and around Sellafield the diagnosis of cancer in children continues.
The German Bremen University confirmed that radioactive contamination by Americium-241 found in some soil samples taken by Greenpeace 11.5 km south of Sellafield, were 400 times higher than those taken 11 km from Chernobyl. These radiation levels are a result of nearly 50 years of reprocessing and have made the Irish Sea the most radioactively contaminated sea in the world. These levels would not be allowed inside Sellafield and are illlegal in BNFL's customer countries.
We know that radioactivity from Sellafield is found in our food, our water supplies, our bodies, our children's teeth and in our house dust. Last year, 2,000 radioactive pigeons had to be killed, a whole garden, including the tarmac drive, was dug up and had to be disposed off as nuclear waste. We know that lobsters, seaweed and vegetables were more radioactive than ever before. Still Sellafield keeps asking for increases in their annual discharges, continually adding to the contamination already there, hiding behind the fact they are "authorized" and thereby implying that they are safe.
Annual government monitoring reports merely show a trend of the effects of the most recent years of radioactive discharges rather than the full impact of both current and historical contamination, to which we are exposed. It worries us that these monitoring report figures are used to estimate the health impact on our communities.
The CORE campaign focuses on the radioactive discharges from the plant, both into the air and sea. We are committed to halting reprocessing at Sellafield, which has placed an unacceptable burden on a community which has borne the brunt of the accumulation of overseas nuclear waste, as well as the associated risks of transports, accidents at the plant and health damage, for too long. We hold public meetings, organize debates and conferences and give talks to local schools, university groups, women's and other organizations, as well as conducting "alternative" tours of the area, highlighting the local problems which the nuclear industry would rather ignore.
As well as submitting papers to the government, we have placed great campaign importance on and have been directly involved with many health studies relating to radiation exposure to members of the public and to workers at Sellafield. As a result of concern expressed by local doctors, we are collecting data on the perceived high number of thyroid disorders in the area.
We are continually approached by people who believe that the many cancers, skin cancers, heart disease, thyroid disorders and auto-immune diseases around them have something to do with Sellafield. The nuclear industry has never been able to prove that it hasn't. They admit that its operations cause "theoretical" fatal and non-fatal cancers, fatal and non-fatal genetic disorders but "how many" is the only dispute in the scientific debate. Sellafield manages to get away with it because, unlike everything in and around us that carries their radioactive fingerprint, the cancers and genetic defects themselves, don't. It is strange therefore that BNFL workers are compensated for nearly all cancers, including skin cancers and eye cataracts on a 20% probability that their illness has been caused by their work at Sellafield.
Our local health authorities ignore the health impact of Sellafield and pretend it doesn't exist. They give us the illusion that health is totally in our own hands. That to stop smoking, eating more fruit and vegetables, take more exercise or not to take off your clothes in the sun, is going to make everything better, it is dishonest. We can improve our lifestyle but we can't do anything about being "passive radiation sufferers" and "Sellafield downwinders". That is up to the authorities and until now they continue to let us down.
Source and Contact: Janine Allis-Smith
CORE, 98 Church Street
Barrow-In-Furness, Cumbria LA14 2HJ, UK.
Tel: +44-1229-833851; Fax: +44-1229-812239
Email: janine@core.furness.co.uk
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