Aldermaston balloon race
The Low Level Radiation Campaign has created this page
to give background information on the logic of the balloon race.
The Easter Hunt for the UK's Weapons of Mass Destruction was organised byThe balloons released by the marchers contained helium, which has the same density as Tritium - one of the radioactive pollutants released from Aldermaston and Harwell. They emitted more than 5620 trillion Becquerels of it between 1948 and 1986 and an evaporator was recently installed to put all Tritium emissions into the air, rather than into local watercourses. This means that anyone who finds a balloon is probably breathing Tritium and possibly other radioisotopes from the UK's bomb maintenance programme.The triangle defined by Oxford, Reading and Newbury contains
- the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell,
- the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston
- the Royal Ordnance Factory, Burghfield.
Leukaemia in children in the vicinity is far higher than UK national average rates. 20 years ago so many children were being treated at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading that doctors began to suspect something was amiss. Yorkshire Television made a documentary about it - Inside Britain's Bomb - which was broadcast in December 1985.
A paper in the British Medical Journal in 1987 (1) confirmed the suspicions.
So did the COMARE 3rd Report (2).There was a statistically significant doubling of risk (101% excess) of childhood leukaemia in the 0 - 4 age group living less than 10 km from a nuclear establishment.
COMARE also had data for childhood cancers other than leukaemia, and showed a 55% excess risk in the same group of children.The data in these studies only covered the 1970s and the early 1980s. In 1996 we used mortality data to show that the high risks were still apparent and were even getting worse.
Between 1986 and 1995 children younger than 14 in the Newbury District were dying of leukaemia at a rate 2.16 times the national average. Between 1991 and 1995 the rate was 4.43 times the average. In a letter to the British Medical Journal (3) we showed that the highest risks were in the parts of the area where radioactive contamination was highest.There is a lot of radioactivity generally in the leukaemia triangle. Some is fallout from nuclear bombs tests by Russia, America and Britain in the 1950 and '60s, but most is home-grown. The following table shows concentrations of radioactivity from the three nuclear establishments, from bomb test fallout, and in the Irish Sea as a result of Sellafield emissions.
Area contaminated Concentration of alpha emitters in MegaBecquerels per square Kilometre Concentration of beta emitters in MegaBecquerels per square Kilometre Leukaemia triangle 118 4863 Irish Sea (Sellafield) 23 2052 Whole northern hemisphere (nuclear weapons tests) 0.055 220 A 1997 survey found soil concentrations of plutonium up to 10 Becquerels per Kilogramme (Bq/Kg), whereas bomb fallout plutonium is generally in the range 0.17 - 0.41 Bq/Kg.
Air samplers designed to trap particles that could be inhaled show that in the area around the nuclear establishments there is much more Plutonium than can be accounted for by weapons test fallout. The table below shows average readings for Plutonium in air as multiples of average concentrations from fallout (5).
In 1998 we published a paper drawing together all this information and suggested a mechanism by which the earth's electrostatic field would resuspend particles of radioactive material. This would explain why rates of radioactivity in the air vary with the seasons. It may also explain the curious distribution of leukaemia cases within the leukaemia triangle. The paper (4) , which was featured on the front page of the Guardian and in the Independent, can be obtained from the LLRC office.
- Aldermaston 17 times
- Burghfield 16 times
- Tadley 8 times
- Reading 7 times
- Newbury 6 times
- Hannington 6 times
- Basingstoke 4 times
Of course, it is always argued that even though there is so much more radioactivity in the locality than in other places, the resulting radiation doses are still far too low to cause so many leukaemia and cancer cases. The authorities argue this way about the clusters near the two British reprocessing plants Sellafield and Dounreay, and the French one at Cap de la Hague, and about excess cancers near nuclear power stations and along the polluted Irish Sea. This is on the basis of advice from the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP).
However, some scientists feel that the ICRP's models are so lacking in precision that such assertions simply cannot be supported. Others feel that to base predictions of the effects of low level chronic irradiation from internal emitters on the outcome of an immediate, high intensity radiation dose from an exploding nuclear weapon (the virtually exclusive basis of ICRP's advice) is too bizarre to take seriously. This credibility gap has resulted in the perception by Government of the need for a fundamental re-examination of all the issues through the deliberations of a new and independent government advisory committee. This is CERRIE - the Committee Examining Radiation Risk of Internal Emitters, which is due to report later this year. CERRIE was established following LLRC's representations to the Minister for the Environment. LLRC has two delegates on the Committee.
References
1 Roman E., Beral V., Carpenter L., Watson A., Barton C., Ryder H, & Aston D L. (1987) Childhood Leukaemia in the West Berkshire and Basingstoke and North Hampshire District Health Authorities in relation to nuclear establishments in the vicinity BMJ 294, 597-602.
2 COMARE 1989 Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment Third Report. Report on the Incidence of Childhood Cancer in the West Berkshire and North Hampshire area, in which are situated the Atomic Weapons research Establishment, Aldermaston and the Royal Ordnance Factory, Burghfield. HMSO London
3 Busby C & Scott Cato M Death rates from leukaemia are higher than expected in areas around nuclear sites in Berkshire and Oxfordshire BMJ 315 August 1997
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