Experiments since 1961 have shown that extremely small chemical particulates called PM2.5s emitted from incinerators and oil-burning power stations can travel up to 80 miles from a 200ft high chimney. The most dangerous area is downwind for seven miles per 100 foot of chimney. In still weather most PM2.5s ground within 1.3 miles. Any inhaled PM2.5 particle or smaller (e.g. PM1) remains in the bottom of the lungs, with the potential to cause a wide range of illnesses, e.g. chronic asthma, diabetes, leukaemia, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, breast and colon cancer, hypothyroidism, arthritis and depression.

The Pembrokeshire (Wales) Oil Complex is a good example. When it switched from burning heavy fuel oil (which emits PM5s) to burning residual fuel oil (PM2.5s and smaller) in 1996:

• child asthma levels in Whitland downwind rose to 38 times those experienced in upwind Cardigan Bay

• hospital admissions for asthma in Pembroke and Milford Haven rose respectively to 17 and 14 times those experienced in Worcestershire (a similar rural area)

• overall cancer incidence rose to eight times that found in Chichester (close to one of the UK’s dirtiest sites, the oil refineries at Fawley in Hampshire)

• diagnoses of clinical depression rose ninefold

Ed.- Dr Dick van Steenis has also established that the UK postcode areas with the highest rates of asthma have twenty times as many hospital admissions for cancer as the postcode areas with the lowest rates.