Filed for The Guardian, 09 April 1990
Radioactive pollution from the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria has spread inland to Lancaster where it could endanger health, according to a new survey carried out by an environmental group.
Radiation monitoring by Friends of the Earth has found levels of contamination by radioactive caesium along 14 kilometres of the River Lune in Lancashire on average twice as high as the Government's derived exposure limits. The highest level - four times the limit - was discovered at Oxcliffe, some 60 kilometres from Sellafield.
When levels exceed a quarter of the limits, the Government's National Radiological Protection Board recommends a detailed investigation of the risks to the public. At Lancaster Weir near a housing estate, levels of caesium are said to be 80 per cent of the limit and levels of americium, a particularly toxic radioactive material usually accompanied by plutonium, 20 per cent of the limit.
"Children playing in this area will therefore receive an external radiation dose and will probably incur an additional risk from breathing or swallowing airborne contamination", says Paul Watts from Friend of the Earth.
"Although radiation levels at Lancaster are lower than other areas along the Lune, they are radiologically significant because of the close vicinity of a large population centre. In the summer, particularly when the soils and sediments dry out, the airborne contamination in the form of wind blown dusts are likely to be available for inhalation by people living in or occupying Lancaster."
The organisation claims that its results - which featured briefly in a Yorkshire Television programme broadcast on Channel 4 last night and are due to be published soon - are the first to be made public on radiation levels along the intertidal stretch of the River Lune. It alleges that monitoring by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has proven inadequate.
A spokesman for MAFF said that it was difficult to comment on a report that the Ministry had not yet seen. "We do monitor the movement of people in the area and they come well within the international recommendations on radiation exposure", he added. A report on exposure pathways, including the River Lune, is due to be published today.
Last month The Guardian reported that a independent survey of the silt deposited on the North Wales town of Towyn after floods a month ago was contaminated with radioactivity from Sellafield more than ten times higher than the Government's safety limits.