Birth defects linked to pollution- HPA West Midlands survey

Mr Carroll made this Freedom of Information request to Health Protection Agency This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

Health Protection Agency did not have the information requested.

Mr Carroll
Unknown

Dear Health Protection Agency,

I am writing to make an open government request for all the
information to which I am entitled under the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations.

In order to assist you with this request, I am outlining my query as specifically as possible.

If however this request is too wide or too unclear, I would be grateful if you could contact me as I understand that under the act, you are required to advise and assist requesters.
According to the Yorkshire Post report "Inquiry ordered into birth defects linked to pollution"
Published on Thursday 15 September 2005 09:03 it is stated

"The HPA, a semi-independent government-funded body, has been investigating possible links between pollution and illness in the West Midlands.

Dr Patrick Saunders, who runs the research programme concerned, said: "The West Midlands pilot mapped data on potential sources of environmental contamination and data on hospital admissions and registrations for diseases such as lung cancer. This enabled possible connections between clusters of disease and possible sites of contamination to be investigated. While the system doesn't prove a link, it does identify areas that need further detailed investigation.

Dr Saunders said it could be that known factors cause the health problems, but added: "You cannot rule out the possibility that some, at least, is due to environmental exposure. There are issues we need to investigate further - in particular, a small but consistent link between land-fill sites and congenital abnormalities."
Could I request the full results of this study concerning the West Midlands refered to by the former Head of the Chemical and Hazards poisons division and risk at the HPA, who now works at Sandwell PCT and the subsequent areas that were identified for further detailed investigation?

I understand that under the act, I should be entitled to a response within 20 working days.
I would be grateful if you could confirm that you have received this request. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Carroll

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Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

Dear Mr Carroll,

Thank you for your request for information under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. We will provide you with a response within the
statutory 20 working day deadline allowed under the FOI Act.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any queries,

Regards,

Ruby Peters

FOI Coordinator

Tel: 020 8327 6920

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Freedom Of Information, Health Protection Agency

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Carroll,

Further to your request for information dated 1^st June 2011, please find
attached our response to your enquiry.

If you have any queries, please feel free to contact me.

Regards,

Ruby Peters

FOI Coordinator

Tel: 020 8327 6920

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Michael Ryan left an annotation ()

I am the Michael Ryan named in the Yorkshire Post of 15 September 2005:

Inquiry ordered into birth defects linked to pollution

Published on Thursday 15 September 2005 09:03
Chris Benfield A MAJOR investigation has been ordered into links between pollution and clusters of birth defects which have been identified in areas as different as inner-city Sheffield and rural North Yorkshire.
It is the first official acknowledgement that the curious pattern of abnormal births - revealed in the Yorkshire Post - might be a cause for concern.

The Government pollution watchdog the Health Protection Agency (HPA) confirmed yesterday there were anomalies which needed explaining and that birth defects would be included in national research.

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/arou...

Ruth Kelly MP, when Treasury Minister, authorised the release of unpublished data showing the numbers of babies in each of the 303 Primary Care Trusts in England who were born with defects in each of the eight years 1995-2002.

I e-mailed Dr Patrick Saunders at the HPA in October 2005 to suggest that Dr Dick van Steenis MBBS and I be involved in the research reported in Yorkshire Post. I was surprised to get a reply saying that there wasn't to be any research and Dr Saunders failed to tell me that he'd been referring to his own PhD thesis.

I'm very grateful to Mr Carroll for his FoI request and I wonder whether Dr Saunders has had a chance to see which Sandwell electoral ward has the highest 2004-2008 infant mortality rate on this map:

http://ukhr.eu/incineration/westmidlandm...

The HPA's promised (will it keep this one??) study into "birth outcomes" around incinerators can be seen at:

http://www.hpa.org.uk/NewsCentre/Nationa...

here's link to the Japanese study which concluded:

"Our study shows a peak-decline in risk with distance from the municipal solid waste incinerators for infant deaths and infant deaths with all congenital malformations combined."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15242...

Dr van Steenis & I weren't pictured on the front page of the YP of 15 September 2005, but we're both pictured in this article:

http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/Exper...

and there's more about the HPA's study here:

http://www.bigissueinthenorth.com/2012/0...

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