THE latest letter by Colin Fletcher, of Welbeck Waste Management Ltd, said: "Government reviews have found that there is no convincing evidence to suggest that emissions from modern facilities harm health."
When gases from Nantygwyddon tip were analysed, 12 of the 117 were found to be carcinogenic.
The Environment Agency's 1998 report, 'Potential Human Health Effects of Landfill Sites', by Martine Vrijheid, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, states: "Improvement in landfilling techniques does not automatically resolve conc
ern regarding the possibility of long-term damage to health from leachate and landfill gas."
The above report contains reviews of 54 health studies around landfill sites, only two of which were in the UK: Nantygwyddon and Walsall, and only these two were deemed to cause no harm to human health.
The 'study' cited for Walsall was not the 1992 epidemiological report prepared by Walsall Health Authority, which confirmed all the fears previously expressed by residents – whose earlier petition to the Queen led to that 1992 report.
Alan Dalton, the former board member of the Environment Agency, whose concern that health effects from landfill sites and incinerators were being ignored and thereby bringing the EA into disrepute, was sacked by Michael Meacher MP in December 2001.
The two landfill sites that concerned him most were Welbeck and Nantygwyddon.
I suggest that Mr Fletcher refrains from commenting on health effects from Welbeck until an accurate, independent study has been carried out comparing illness and mortality rates around Welbeck with a 'control' zone that is free from the type of emissions that the landfill site inflicts on residents.
Michael Ryan,
Gains Avenue,
Bicton Heath,
Shrewsbury
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