Filed for The Guardian, 21 March 1991
Children could have contracted leukaemia from playing on the beaches near the Dounreay nuclear plant on the north coast of Scotland, according to a Government study published yesterday.
Its chief author, James Urquhart, an epidemiologist who heads a Scottish Health Service research team, said that his personal choice would be not to let children use beaches near the plant.
“The evidence relating to the use of the beach is very weak. However on balance and given the absence of an alternative explanation, the answer must be that I would not take young children onto the beach”, he told a press conference in Edinburgh.
His two-year investigation discovered that the only significant common factor that might explain the tenfold excess of childhood leukaemias around Dounreay was use of local beaches. But he cautioned that the information was based on only five cases and was subject to the accuracy of parents’ memories.
His paper, published in the British Medical Journal, points out that the children who contracted leukaemia had all used the beaches during 1979 and 1980. The Government yesterday agreed to the recommendation of its advisory committee on radiation, COMARE, that there should be a review of the Dounreay beach monitoring data.
The study found no link between the leukaemias and the radiation exposure of fathers and hence does not confirm the conclusion last year by Professor Martin Gardner’s Medical Research Council study that such a link existed at the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria. But Mr Urquhart stressed that his findings did not negate Gardner’s study either.
The Dounreay study does rule out any connection with antenatal x-rays, the social class of parents, viral infections during pregnancy or microwave radiation from a local US naval communications mast. It speculates that the causes of childhood leukaemia could be due to several complex and related factors.
Another study published yesterday suggests that other pollutants as well as radiation could be to blame for the high rates of childhood leukaemia in parts of northern England. A paper by a team at Leeds University under Dr Ray Cartwright concludes that children of fathers exposed to wood dust, benzene and radiation in West Cumbria, North Humberside and Gateshead were at risk.
Funded to the tune of about £50,000 by British Nuclear Fuels, it does tend to support Gardner’s findings, although again it is based on a small sample. It discovered that industrial radiographers as well as Sellafield workers were more likely to father children with leukaemia.
The Cartwright study, however, does not confirm suspicions that a tin smelter at Capper Pass on north Humberside and industrial incinerators in Gateshead were to blame for locally high rates of leukaemia. The men whose children contracted leukaemia were exposed to wood dust in factories and carpentry workshops and exposed to benzene in the chemical industry.
The Atomic Energy Authority said last night that “the perceived link with Dounreay’s activities looks increasingly unlikely”. Its assistant director, Ken Butler, stressed that further studies should be initiated to pursue the causes of “this tragic disease”.
British Nuclear Fuels stressed that the data in the Cartwright study was sparse and should be interpreted with caution. The radiation doses received by the industrial radiographers was not confirmed or quantified, a spokesman said.
Lorraine Mann, one of Scotland’s leading anti-nuclear campaigners, called for Dounreay’s reprocessing plant to be shut down. “We’re talking about children dying of cancer. You cannot carry on reprocessing when that is happening”, she said.
Dr Patrick Green, Friends of the Earth’s radiation campaigner, said: “These new studies once again point the finger of blame at nuclear plants. The new radiation safety standards must be drastically revised to protect the children at risk rather than shore up the nuclear industry.”