Dear Scottish Government,

Please disclose:

1. The size of the grant awarded towards the cost of the study into a link between incinerators and infant mortality, stillbirths, low birthweight babies and birth defects:

"Funding

The study is funded by a grant from Public Health England (PHE), by a grant from the Scottish government, and funding from the MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health.

The work of the UK Small Area Health Statistics Unit is funded by Public Health England as part of the MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, funded also by the UK Medical Research Council."

http://www.sahsu.org/content/incinerator...

2. The data relating to the Baldovie (Dundee) incinerator that has been provided to the researchers carrying out above study. The Baldovie incinerator is the only Scottish incinerator in the above study.

3. The month and year when the first Dundee incinerator was built.

4. The infant mortality rates in Dundee for each of the years 1960-2013

The entire text of the Sunday Times article about the Dundee incinerator is pasted here:

"Council accused of whitewash over Dundee cancer cluster", by Lucy Adams,
Scottish Home Affairs Correspondent (Sunday Times, 25 May 2003, page 7)

Leading international cancer experts have accused Dundee city council of a "whitewash" to cover up alarming new figures that reveal the city has one of Europe's largest clusters of victims - near a waste incinerator .

They say the council may be guilty of "criminal neglect" and have called for a Scottish parliament inquiry into its conduct.

The study, which was commissioned and paid for by Dundee city council, discovered a cluster of non- Hodgkins lymphoma with 81 cases more than average, but played down the possibility of a link with the nearby Baldovie incinerator .

Cancer experts and MSPs say the findings warrant a new, more extensive investigation by independent experts and the Scottish executive because of the scale of the cluster and contradictions in the report.

Dr Fiona Williams of the University of Dundee and Dr Mike Roworth of Tayside NHS board investigated the issue two years ago after a similar study in Besancon, France, discovered cancer clusters around an incinerator .

The Besancon study discovered a cluster of non-Hodgkins lymphoma with 61 cases above average - 20 fewer than were found in Dundee. Dioxin levels at the old Baldovie incinerator in Dundee were often double those in Besancon, but the Dundee report concluded that there was "no evidence of an association".

Its conclusions have now been criticised by leading cancer experts. Roworth, co- author of the study, admitted to The Sunday Times that one of the main causes of this cancer cited in the study - genetic predisposition - has already been refuted by scientists.

Despite the "significant" evidence, the council says that the matter has been dropped.

"This is clearly an attempt at a whitewash to exculpate the council," said Samuel Epstein, a professor of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois in Chicago and an adviser to the US Senate. "The figures speak for themselves and their efforts to trivialise the cluster seem to be grossly unscientific.

"There is clear evidence of a major cancer cluster which would be fully consistent with environmental pollutants but they have listed risk factors such as genetics which are completely irrelevant. I would regard this as criminal negligence and call for a parliamentary inquiry."

The Dundee report also found evidence of "clustering for myeloid leukaemia", which is also thought to be caused by environmental pollutants.

Epstein believes that a further study should be conducted in the area to test for incidence of childhood cancers and diseases which, he said, are a primary indicator of pollutants.

Scottish health statistics show that from 1975-90 Tayside went from having one of the lowest rates of perinatal mortality to the highest in Scotland. In 1978, the year before the incinerator started, the rate of stillbirths in Tayside was below the national average but by 1990 it was almost double.

In July 2001 The Sunday Times revealed that before the old incinerator closed and was replaced in 1996, average dioxin emissions were more than 500 times the European recommended levels.

Shiona Baird, Green MSP for North East Scotland, plans to launch a parliamentary inquiry about the issue."
*********************

Dundee Council is one of many that have, or have had a financial interest in an incinerator as well as a duty to protect public health.

"The future of the loss-making Baldovie incerator is in doubt after it emerged that owners Dundee City Council are considering alternate means of disposing of the city’s waste."
(The Courier, 4 June 2014)

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/business/new...

The Courier of 14 March 2014 starts as follows:

"The Baldovie incinerator in Dundee has been given a clean bill of health by NHS Tayside.

The health board has found no evidence of any increase in deaths from heart disease, cancer or an increase in infant mortality over the past 10 years in areas around the Dundee Energy Recycling Ltd waste-to-energy plant.

The statistics were revealed by NHS Tayside following a report which claims that families living downwind of incinerators are more at risk from infant death, heart disease, cancer and autism.

The report was based on Office of National Statistics data using the South East London Combined Heat and Power Plant in Deptford as an example."

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/d...

The SELCHP incinerator started in 1993 and the infant mortality rate had been falling prior to that time - thanks largely to the reduction in air pollution following the switch to cleaner North Sea Gas as I've explained in this Liverpool Echo letter and accompanying graph:

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/[email address].-a0357065225

http://ukhr.eu/incineration/selchp.htm

Note also that the death rate from asthma in the London Borough of Lewisham rose after SELCHP started as reported in June 2005 in "FINAL REPORT
SELCHP WASTE TO ENERGY PLANT HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENT"

"Report prepared on behalf of the SELCHP Health Impact Assessment Steering Group by
Ruth Barnes1, Rachel Heathcock2
1. Independent Public Health Consultant 2. Consultant in Communicable Disease Control, South East London Health
Protection Unit"

Figure 26
Standardised mortality ratios, 1990 to 2000: asthma (ICD9 493)25

The above graph on page 51 of SELCHP report shows SMR for asthma much lower than average in 1990 (ie prior to start of SELCHP) and stayed around & above the average rate for London after SELCHP started.

The following is on page 33 of the same report:

"A perception of increasingly poor health
49. There is a perception that has been an increase in illness overall in the local area in recent years, particularly in relation to respiratory diseases such as bronchitis and asthma. However, there is uncertainty about what may have caused this, if the increase is a real one. Two factors were thought to be implicated: poor air quality due to traffic and the SELCHP plant as a creator of air pollution."

Note that the wealthy London Borough of Kensington & Chelsea had the highest infant mortality rate of all 32 London Boroughs during the three-year period 1965-67, ie before the switch to North Sea Gas and when that Borough was exposed to emissions from Battersea and other nearby power stations.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Ryan