Since the 1970s, abnormally high child leukaemia rates have been evident in the seaside towns of Caernarfon, Bangor and Colwyn Bay (near the Menai Straits).

In 1991, the Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit (WCISU) recorded the numbers of cases correctly, but used threefold exaggerated population totals for Bangor, disguising their significance. Using correct figures for all three towns gave a rate of child leukaemia nearly eight times higher than the UK average. Even using WCISU’s figures gave a twofold higher rate, which, surprisingly, it was still able to pass off as an insignificant blip.

The Low Level Radiation Campaign (LLRC) and the Padeswood Public Enquiry pointed out the error to WCISU but it repeated it three years later, and again in 2005 after the Welsh language TV channel S4C got hold of the story.

Despite warnings from LLRC and others, the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) persists in accepting and using the WCISU figures.

Outdated science

COMARE’s determination to use the least worrying albeit wrong figures is compounded by a similar determination to use out-of-date science. The International Commission on Radiological Protection, the European Committee on Radiation Risk, France’s Radiation Protection Unit and the UK’s Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters all now accept that the external dose of radiation to which a person has been exposed is meaningless in situations where radioactive particles are entering the body. It is the number of particles which have entered the body (internal dose ) which counts.

COMARE is only prepared to consider external dose, and uses that position to deny the possibility that officially recorded radiation exposures could cause leukaemia or other cancers. (They used the same argument back in 1983 to support their claim that the childhood leukaemia clusters in the town of Seascale and the Sellafield nuclear site could not possibly be linked. Instead they suggested that an unknown virus brought into the area by site workers was the cause.)

COMARE also refuses to accept that radioactive ‘hot’ particles can be carried long distances from their source by rivers or the wind. If leukaemia clusters do not occur uniformly around a nuclear site, or do not appear shortly after operations commence or leaks occur, they deny the possibility of a link. Analyses by LLRC have provided convincing evidence of links between the Hinckley B nuclear power station in Somerset and breast cancer clusters downwind in Burnham-on-Sea, the Bradwell nuclear power station in Essex and leukaemia clusters in Maldon, twelve miles away, and Sellafield and the child leukaemia clusters in the Menai Straits.

Ed.- LLRC are right to limit their charge to one of incompetence. It would be inconceivable that COMARE would knowingly use incorrect statistics or bad science to conceal a Government-sponsored health problem from the public.