Doctors urge halt to waste incineration: Fallout 'harming people and wildlife'

Doctors urge halt to waste incineration: Fallout 'harming people and wildlife'

by Yorkshire Post

14th February 2006

WASTE incinerators are dangerous and no more should be built, say doctors - just as the Government is encouraging councils to increase their numbers.

The warning comes as Ministers today unveil a draft waste disposal strategy promoting incineration as the answer to England's waste crisis.

A junior Minister in the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, Ben Bradshaw, will launch the document which says incineration must be part of the solution.

However, a new report from a British doctors' group, which puts them on the side of "green"campaigners,says incinerators are a health hazard that can cause higher rates of adult and childhood cancer and also birth defects around municipal waste incinerators.

The British Society for Ecological Medicine (BSEM), a professional body for specialists in allergies, poisons and other environmental health factors, says it has been convinced that the fallout is harming people, animals and fish. Incinerators should go to the bottom of the list of options for dealing with waste and not one more should be built, the report says.

Instead it recommends more modern ways of dealing with waste, such as recycling.

The authors also argue that incineration is contrary to international law giving people the right to a healthy environment.

The report was written by two BSEM members - Jeremy Thompson, a GP in retired expert on allergies and statistics, Honor Anthony, who formerly worked at Airedale Hospital, Keighley and still lives in Leeds.

The president of the BSEM, Damien Downing, said yesterday that planners were declaring incinerators safe on the basis of out-of- date information and computerised predictions which were no better than tossing acoin.

He added: "We recommend the introduction of a stricter and more comprehensive system for the monitoring of all waste-burning plants."

The BSEM report says it is no longer safe to ignore research, largely from America, which strongly suggests that invisible and unstoppable micro-particles of metals, radioactive materials and medicines are dangerous by-products of incinerators. They get deep into people's lungs and set up reactions which cause birth defects, heart disease and possibly even psychiatric illness, as well as respiratory problems.

Environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth has predicted 22 new incinerators will be built Hull and East Yorkshire councils propose to build one in East Hull, after failing with a similar plan in the 1990s. Leeds also wants one and York and North Yorkshire are considering the possibility. Sheffield and Huddersfield already have them.

Sheffield's is at the heart of a city-centre heating system while Kirklees Council is considering a similar proposal for Huddersfield. Leeds is also proposing to use the energy from incineration in some way, because it is a popular solution with voters.