Camelford water pollution incident
50°37′01″N 4°40′59″W / 50.617°N 4.683°W
The Camelford water pollution incident involved the accidental contamination of the drinking water supply to the town of
Immediately after the contamination the authorities said that the water was safe to drink, possibly with juice to cover the unpleasant taste. In an inquest in 2012 into the death of one of the victims, the coroner stated that South West Water Authority had been "gambling with as many as 20,000 lives" when they failed to inform the public about the poisoning for 16 days, a delay he called unacceptable.[5] In the aftermath of the contamination the public were reassured that there was no risk to health. There were allegations of a cover-up and West Somerset Coroner Michael Rose stated: "I found there was a deliberate policy to not advise the public of the true nature until some 16 days after the occurrence of the incident."[8] Following an investigation by the government's Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment, Michael Meacher, the former Environment Minister, claimed that "various associated bodies tried to bury the inquiry from the start." Meacher told one newspaper: "This has become a tug of war between the truth and an attempt to silence the truth."[9][10]
An April 2013 report by the Lowermoor subgroup of the Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment concluded that exposure to the chemicals was unlikely to cause "delayed or persistent harm" and was also unlikely to cause future ill health.[11][12] In September 2013 the government admitted that there had been a "manifest failure to give prompt appropriate advice and information to affected consumers" and offered an unreserved apology.[13]
Cause
On 6 July 1988, John Stephens, a relief tanker driver working for ISC Chemicals, a
Response
For several days the water authority insisted the water was safe, and should be mixed with orange juice to disguise the taste of the as yet unknown contaminant. One customer who telephoned the authority the day after the contamination was told "there had been some acidity, but the water was perfectly safe to drink," and was no more harmful than lemon juice.[18] On 14 July 1988 the authority sent a circular letter to all customers "asserting that the water from the treatment works was of the right alkalinity and was safe to use and drink."[19] Within two days, the authority suspected the source of the contamination was the erroneous delivery, which was confirmed on 12 July when the driver was asked to return to the treatment works. However, it was not until ten days later on 22 July that the authority's chairman Keith Court authorised a public notice, containing the first mention of the aluminium sulphate, to be published in the sports section of a local newspaper, the Western Morning News.[20] Stephens stated that after the site meeting where he confirmed he had delivered the chemical to the wrong tank he was told by the authority "not to mention it to anyone else".[21] The SWWA district manager, John Lewis, said they had realised within 48 hours that aluminium sulphate was the likely cause of the contamination, but Lewis said he had been instructed by Leslie Nicks, the head of operations, not to tell the public.[22][23]
Douglas Cross, a consultant biologist based in Camelford, tested the water and found that it contained "not only aluminium sulphate but other noxious substances, too. As the acidic liquid travelled from the plant into people's homes, it corroded the copper pipes and their soldered joints, made of zinc and lead."[1] Official advice to boil the water before drinking was, according to Cross, "dangerous advice because it concentrates the contaminants. They kept flushing the pipes out for months after the incident. This will have stirred up debris in the bends and only have lengthened the amount of time the water was coming through the taps with all sorts of metals in it."
Sixty-thousand (60,000) salmon and trout were killed in the Camel and Allen rivers during the flushing out process.[24][25] The contamination was compounded by the failure of the authority to carry out the required six-monthly cleaning of the tank, which had not been cleaned for three years, leading to a build up of sludge.[26]
A month after the contamination, Michael Waring at the
Reports and inquiries
In August 1988 a highly critical report by Dr John Lawrence, a senior ICI scientist and non-executive member of the water authority, blamed lax procedures. He also criticised communication failures which kept information from the public.[28]
Lowermoor Incident Health Advisory Group report
The Lowermoor Incident Health Advisory Group (LIHAG) was set up in January 1989 to provide expert advice to the
COT Lowermoor Subgroup report
In June 2000 Environment minister Michael Meacher announced that there would not be an independent public inquiry, and declared "All the facts are fully known and there is no reason to believe that a public inquiry could add to that."[34] In November 2000 the Environmental Law Centre [1] prepared a petition to the European Parliament calling for a Brussels-based inquiry.[35] On 14 August 2001 the government announced that an investigation – although not a full public inquiry – into the incident would take place.[36] The investigation was to be undertaken by the newly formed Lowermoor Subgroup (LSG) consisting of scientific and health experts and local resident representatives, chaired by Frank Woods, a professor of medicine at the University of Sheffield.[36] Woods was also the head of the government's Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT), of which the Lowermoor team was a subgroup.[37] Its remit was to advise on whether the incident had caused, or was expected to cause, long-term harm to human health and examine whether the existing programme of monitoring and research into the human health effects was sufficient.[38]
2005 draft report
A draft report, published on 26 January 2005, was inconclusive, saying that the long-term health effects on the population were still unknown and that there was insufficient scientific information available to determine whether the health problems being experienced were caused by the contamination.[39] Woods called for further studies and said: "We will be putting the strongest possible case to the minister. I believe carrying out that work is important, it is not something which should be dropped and pushed aside."[39]
The following year, Meacher made several criticisms of the group:
- the requirement to examine the DoH's handling of the incident was removed from the terms of reference
- no independent expert on aluminium toxicology was included in the working group
- an attempt was made to include Waring as medical adviser to the group, even though he was the author of the original letter stating that no lasting ill effects would result
- no objective testing of the exposed population was carried out
- too much reliance was placed on the water sample analysis from the South-West Water Authority, the compromised party
- the amount of sludge reported to have been in the contact tank at the time was ignored
- experts were drawn on who had potentially vested interests in the aluminium industry
- the DoH pre-released a highly misleading statement of the findings two days before the draft report was due to be made public
- the executive summary, prepared without the group's approval, and which effectively concluded that the illnesses reported bore no connection with the water poisoning, was "misleading and biased".[27]
Two members of the LSG committee claimed in December 2007 that the DoH had known from the start that some people were at especially high risk from aluminium poisoning but deliberately suppressed this evidence to protect the government's plans for
2013 final report
The final report was published in April 2013, and concluded that it was unlikely that the exposure to chemicals could have caused long-term health problems. Key findings of the report include:
- there is no evidence that the combination of metals which occurred as a result of the incident could have caused delayed health effects
- there was an increase in childhood infections in the area, but this increase occurred before the pollution incident
- a study of cancer incidence and mortality showed that there was no increase in cancer incidence in the area after the pollution incident
- a dermatologist investigated skin and nail problems reported by individuals affected by the incident, and reported that the problems are similar to those experienced by the general population
- there is no evidence that the contaminants can cause joint or muscle pain and/or swelling, and these complaints are common in the general population
- a Camelford resident who died of severe cerebral amyloid angiopathy was found to have higher than normal aluminium concentrations in the brain during an autopsy. However samples from the brain of a patient with similar neuropathology but unknown aluminium exposure found similar higher than usual concentrations. Research commissioned by the coroner compared 60 postmortem brains and found no correlation between aluminium or iron concentrations and the level of congophilic angiopathy or senile plaques[42][12]
Health effects
Short-term
A diverse array of short-term health effects was reported by members of the public who either drank the contaminated water or came into contact with it while bathing.[16][28] These included:
- urinary complaints,
- blistering and peeling of skin,
- hair turning blue or green,
- diarrhoea and vomiting
- joint pains.
Long-term
A 1999 report in the
Victims have reported:[31][35][46]
- fatigue,
- fibromyalgia,
- premature ageing,
- loss of short-term memory, and
- multiple chemical sensitivity.
Seven months after the contamination, one victim underwent a bone biopsy which "found a ring of aluminium like the rings you see in trees" that could not have resulted from normal aluminium absorption.[18][27]
Later deaths of victims
The husband of Carol Cross, who died of a rare form of dementia in 2004, said in 2006 that he believed that his wife and twenty other people had died as a result of the disaster, and that more cases were emerging.[16]
Victim Sarah Sillifant, who was in her twenties when she was exposed, hanged herself in 2005 after suffering dementia and other symptoms similar to those experienced by Carol Cross.[16] In June 2007, Irene Neal, who lived in Rock, near Camelford at the time of the incident, died aged 91. A post-mortem examination found an "unacceptable amount of aluminium in the brain".[47]
Carol Cross
In 2006 a post-mortem
Rose had adjourned the inquests for Cross and Neal pending further studies, but in 2008 said the Government had refused "to either finance or assist" research to test the hypothesis of a link between exposure to aluminium and
In July 2009 Rose announced that the inquest into Cross's death would resume in November 2010.[52] Rose said that "ongoing medical research would not be completed until late summer" 2010. He explained "This research is necessary to prove whether or not the high level of aluminium in Mrs Cross's brain causing her death through beta amyloid angiopathy (a form of cerebrovascular disease) on 19 February 2004, could be attributed to the aluminium sulphate placed in the public water supply at Lowermoor treatment works on 6 July 1988. This is the last adjournment I am able to agree and the inquest will commence on Monday 1 November 2010 at Taunton."[52]
When the inquest was reconvened Dr. Chris Exley, a reader in bioinorganic chemistry at Keele University, said "The brain aluminium concentration was so high that it is highly likely that it contributed to her brain pathology, probably being responsible for the aggressive form and very early onset of the disease." Neuropathologist Prof. Margaret Esiri, from the John Radcliffe Hospital, said "I have never seen a case such as this at this age. I have seen one case in a woman who died aged 81 but the literature shows only a handful of cases worldwide."[53] As a result of their evidence the inquest was again adjourned to allow South West Water Authority time to seek its own expert evidence.[54]
Carol Cross's inquest was finally completed in March 2012. The coroner returned a narrative verdict recording the circumstances without attributing the cause, in which he said the water supply company, South West Water Authority had been "gambling with as many as 20,000 lives" when they failed to inform the public about the poisoning for 16 days, a delay he called unacceptable. An expert said at the inquest that the levels of aluminium in her brain were "beyond belief".[5]
Rose stated: "I found there was a deliberate policy to not advise the public of the true nature until some 16 days after the occurrence of the incident," and that "[T]he failure of the authority to visit every house after the incident to advise them to thoroughly flush their systems [w]as a serious dereliction of duty. I can say that the incident may either have contributed to or possibly caused Mrs Cross's death, but I do not have sufficient evidence to say so conclusively."[55]
Legal actions against South West Water Authority
In 1991 the South West Water Authority was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £25,000 costs at
Allegations of a cover-up
On 13 December 2007 Michael Rose announced that, in light of "a possible attempt to initially suppress the seriousness of the incident, I am asking the chief constable of Devon and Cornwall to hand me evidence gathered at the time of the original investigation," and for the chief constable to appoint a senior detective "to look into the allegations of a possible cover-up."[58]
At the time of the incident the water industry was about to be privatised by the Conservative government of the day; a letter written from a water official to Michael Howard, then Minister of State for Water and Planning, emerged which stated that a police investigation into the poisoning incident was viewed as "very distracting" and that any subsequent prosecution of South West Water would also "be totally unhelpful to privatisation... and render the whole of the water industry unattractive to the City".[citation needed] The Western Morning News, using a Freedom of Information Act request, uncovered a briefing note to the then Environment Minister, Nicholas Ridley, warning: "Those of the South West board with a commercial background are deeply concerned by the investigation."[59] There was speculation in the news media that commercial concerns were given priority over public health.
The former North Cornwall
In 2001 Environment Minister Michael Meacher claimed that the Government feared what an unrestricted inquiry might find, and that "There was then a great deal of shenanigans about the terms of reference and fighting at all levels in order to limit the ambit of the committee to get the result they wanted. This inquiry was always potentially hugely damaging and hugely worrying to the establishment in terms of the way they handled the incident and clearly there are elements that want to shut it down." No named individuals were ever prosecuted. The national water industry was sold, under the Conservative government, for £3.59 billion, with the sale of South West Water Authority raising around £300 million.[59]
See also
References
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