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'No Cancer link with Sellafield?' said the Manx Radio headline with a cautiously appended question mark.
The station was reporting on a five year study into cancer deaths, as yet uncompleted. The news item went on, "The Island's Director of Public Health, Dr. Parameswaran Kishore, is strongly suggesting preliminary findings from a five year study dispel the myth there is a link".
Most people will be glad that the question mark was appended and will also be anxious to see the completed report. Even then many will probably ask why it has taken the Isle of Man government over thirty years to seriously address this issue when it was in the mid-seventies when serious concerns over Sellafield and cancers were first raised. A lot of pollutants have come down the Sellafield sea outfall and a lot of cancer deaths have ocurred in that time.
It would also be prudent for government to cross reference its findings with others before making conclusions. Many people have deeply seated concerns about the linkage between our proximity to the worst polluter in the history of the British nuclear industry and cancer deaths here. Many of those directly affected by cancer deaths will need to see hard and conclusive evidence before they accept the rejections of their concerns as a 'myth'.
What is not in dispute is that the Isle of Man has been sitting in the middle of the greatest concentration of man-made nuclear pollution ever deliberately discharged by a government into areas of concentrated population. After all it is less then twenty miles from the end of the Sellafield nuclear waste pipe to Ramsey Bay.
Whilst levels of pollution are said to be steadily reducing now, for years they were at unacceptably high concentrations. Even the French, when criticised for their South Seas nuclear testing and the pollution it caused, pointed to Sellafield as a worst case scenario which France came nowhere near to.
Contamination levels are falling now but what of the long term implications for the marine environment and communities that live around the Irish sea? It will take more than one set of good statistics to calm concerns.
In addition, one most also be sceptical about a set of results based on one study. The unfortunate shenanigans surrounding the Welsh Cancer Registry a decade ago prove that 'accurate data' is not always what it seems (see links).
Links referred to at:
Manx Radio report mentioned at:
J B Moffatt Director of Information Celtic League
22/06/08
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