Dear All,

Michael Meacher, former UK Minister of the Enivronment, in an article published in the UK Guardian yesterday, makes very clear the despicable role the British government and its civil servants played in ignoring - for 18 years - the plight of citizens poisoned in the Camelford incident, where 20 tons of aluminium sulfate was dumped into their water supply.

Those who have the luxory of not being the victims of poisoning probably do not realize that these people - whether they be Vietnam Vets posioned by Agent Orange or people poisoned by emissions from incinerators and landfills or mercury amalgam or pesticide sprays or people impacted by multiple chemical sensitivities - suffer a triple hemorage. First, they have to suffer the physical pain from illnesses that doctors can seldom diagnose; second, they have to suffer the accusations that it is “all in the mind” (and now there are psychiatrists who are earning a handsome living making such accusations stick) and third, they have to suffer helplessly as health agencies - who they had thought would help them - do nothing but spin and obfuscate.

This triple hemorage was experienced by the people of Camelford.

If Camelford, as Meacher says,  “offers a textbook example of lessons that need to be learned if trust is to be regained in public  life”  then ending water fluoridation would demonstrate to the public that the lessons have been learned. Every day this unscientific and dangerous fraud continues this practice claims more and more people who totally distrust their health authorities on anything. That is not politically healthy.

Armed with the National Research Council’s comprehensive 3-year, 450-page review of fluoride’s toxicity at low levels, it is time for the health services in Australia, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US to admit this horrendous mistake before another victim experiences the triple hemorage.

I wonder if Michael Meacher will help us. Could someone in the UK get this message  to him?

Paul Connett

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http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1760929,00.html

A  wash out

Lessons must be learned from the notorious Camelford water  contamination
incident

Michael Meacher
Wednesday April 26,  2006
The Guardian

On July 6 1988, a serious incident occurred  that is still sending shockwaves
through medical, administrative and political  circles. Although the
conclusions from the saga are still, 18 years on, not yet  complete, it is a microcosm
of how badly public authorities can react when  confronted with something

that has gone seriously wrong. It offers a textbook  example of lessons that need

to be learned if trust is to be regained in public  life.

That date in 1988 was the day of the Camelford acid water incident  in
Cornwall. Twenty tonnes of aluminium sulphate was accidentally dumped into  the
wrong tank at Lowermoor water treatment works on the edge of Bodmin Moor.  For
five days people were told the water was safe to drink, but that it should  be
boiled - unfortunate advice, because boiling concentrated the contaminants. 

Immediate symptoms included nausea and vomiting, skin rashes and mouth 
ulcers. Others noted that their hair, skin or finger nails had been stained blue 
or brown. No medical help was offered until local residents formed a
collective.  They were told that because the incident was chemical not bacteriological,
it  was deemed wholly a matter for the water company. But the medical officer
of the  water company admitted he had no expertise in biochemistry.

The  following month, an official from the Department of Health (DoH),
Michael  Waring, wrote to every doctor in Cornwall saying that, although he had no 
detailed information on what exactly was in the water or how much people might

 have drunk, he could assure them that no lasting ill effects would result. 

Meanwhile, local Conservative MP Gerard Neal had assured his  constituents
that he would seek a public inquiry. A few weeks later, he changed  his mind and
told people they were not suffering real ill health but  psychosomatic
symptoms led by the hysterical behaviour of the media. A year  later, he was
congratulated in parliament by the then health secretary, who  sympathised with him
because of the “troublemakers” he had had to deal with. It  may be relevant
that, at this time, the Tory government was gearing up for water  privatisation.
Also in August, Elizabeth Sigmund, a member of the local  residents’
collective, contacted a senior toxicologist at the DoH, GK Matthews,  to seek help and
advice. He suggested a team of medical experts should at once  be sent to
North Cornwall. A month later, he said he had attended meeting after  meeting in
the department at which he “was overruled”.

Public concern,  however, did not abate, and in January 1989 the government
was forced to appoint  a team of scientists to investigate. Dame Barbara
Clayton, famous for her report  on whether lead in car exhaust fumes could damage
children’s health, was chosen  as head.
The team flew to Camelford and interviewed several people who had  suffered
ill health. It then held a press conference to give its view that the  symptoms
being experienced could not be related to water. This report still did  not
allay public anxieties and Clayton was asked to write a second. She  concluded
again that her first conclusion was correct.

Surprising result 

Meanwhile, in the summer of 1989, patients started to lose toe and  finger
nails, and John Eastwood, a renal consultant at St George’s hospital,  Tooting,
south London, was asked, as an independent initiative, to arrange two  bone
biopsies on patients from North Cornwall. These showed a discrete layer of 
aluminium in the deep bone - a surprising result that could not have resulted 
from normal aluminium absorption. No official action was taken to follow up the 
implications of this, and there the matter lay for a decade.

In 2000, I  was asked as environment minister by the Liberal MP, Paul Tyler,
to visit  Camelford to witness for myself the widespread public distress still
being  caused to the local population by the absence of any detailed
examination of  their symptoms. After listening for a day to the evidence presented, I
was  persuaded (contrary to my briefing) that a much fuller investigation was
needed.  The Lowermoor sub-group study was set up, and it reported in 2005. 

However, internal machinations continued. 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.

Furthermore, 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,  even though it was
critical in estimating whether the concentrations people were  exposed to were much
higher than might otherwise have been expected. And experts  were drawn on
who had potentially vested interests in the aluminium industry. 

Despite these flaws, the DoH, which appointed the chairman and secretary  to
the group, pre-released a highly misleading statement of the findings two 
days before the draft report was due to be made public. This, and the equally 
misleading and biased executive summary prepared by the secretariat without the 
group’s approval, effectively concluded that the illnesses reported bore no 
connection with the water poisoning.

But the story does not end there.  The wife of one of the members of the
study group died of what a pathologist  described as “a very unusual pattern of

severe sporadic amyloid angiopathy”,  with extremely elevated levels of
aluminium deposition in the most severely  affected areas of the brain. In addition, a
45-year-old woman who had also been  exposed to the most highly contaminated
water in 1988 took her own life after  developing delusions and similar
medical symptoms.

It has also just come  to light that the police in 1989 assembled 7,000 pages
of documentary evidence,  reviewed by JW Bridges, professor of toxicology at
the University of Surrey, for  the prosecution of South-West Water Authority.
But this medical evidence was  never used.
This is a tragic story - at best of obfuscation and bureaucratic  inertia, at
worst of downright official hostility and obstruction. One can only  surmise
what political, administrative or industrial motives have been behind  it.

But what is clear is that there needs to be a radical overhaul of  the system
of redress if there is to be the openness, transparency and justice  that
people in Britain today should have a right to expect.

· Michael  Meacher was environment minister from 1997 to 2003.