UK Government secrecy has made information about the incidence of cancers in small geographical areas very hard to obtain, impeding the work of health campaigners wishing to test evidence of links between radioactive emissions from nuclear power and weapons establishments and cancers. Now, a surprising and rare release of census ward-based data for England and Wales in December 1999 has made it possible for the Low Level Radiation Campaign (LLRC) to test the anecdotal evidence of raised levels of cancers around the two Hinckley Point nuclear power stations in North Somerset, near the town of Burnham-on-Sea.

Earlier work on radioactive pollution from the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria showed that there were three sources of contamination carried by the wind: directly from the nuclear plant; from sea spray (contaminated waste has often been dumped into the sea near plants); from dust blown up from beaches and mud flats contaminated by dumpings and leaks. The LLRC considered the residents of Burnham-on-Sea to be high-risk on all counts. The town is directly downwind of Hinckley Point and thus in the path of airborne emissions of radioactive gases such as tritium, carbon-14 dioxide and krypton-85. It is close to the huge Steart Flats mud banks, which are contaminated by liquid wastes from the plant. Its own `beach' at low tide is a muddy sand extending to the horizon.

An analysis of the newly-released data confirmed the hypothesis. The incidence of deaths from breast cancer in the Burnham North ward was double the national average (8.7 deaths expected, 17 recorded). The incidence of deaths from both breast and prostate cancer decreased the further people lived from the Steart Flats mud bank in the same pattern as that established for contamination inland from sea spray and plutonium around Sizewell. People living on higher ground (above 200 metres) had significantly lesser risk than those living on lower ground.
An analysis of gamma radiation levels in the area showed that the Steart Flats had levels three times the average inland levels and that the beach at Burnham had levels twice as high.