A move by Friends of the Earth campaigners to have an independant investigation carried out concerning Castle Cement is not being supported by Ribble Valley Borough Council.

At Tuesday's meeting of the Community Committee, councillors considered a request from the FoE to support an independant investigation into the effectiveness of the Environment Agency's regulation of the plant.

They voted overwhelmingly against the request and in favour of the Environment Agency's ability to carry out tests and monitoring of emissions from the plant.

Just two weeks ago, Castle Cement was taken to court by the Environment Agency. At Lancaster Assizes the firm was ordered to pay £119,000 in fines and costs on three pollutiuon summonses.

However, Friends of the Earth officials were disappointed with the level of fines imposed and questioned the company's assertion that there was no evidence of links with ill health in the area.

Borough councillors said that they were aware of the FoE's lack of trust in the agency, but felt there was no evidence to suggest it was not capable of continuing it's work.

Cancers in one street in Clitheroe are unlikely to be due to emissions from Castle Cement according to the local health chief.

The minutes of the liason committee of Ribble Valley Borough Council representatives, the Environment Agency and the East Lancashire Health Authority reveal that a resident in the street wrote to the committee about cancer cases there.

The minute give no indication of which street it is but do say that the Director of Public Health, Dr Steven Morton, took the view that the cases were unlikely to be due to emissions from the cement works.

The committee was told that the East Lancashire Health Authority would be repeating its small health analysis in the north-east of Clitheroe some time this year.

          'Dr Steven Morton, took the view that the cases were unlikely to be due to emissions from the cement
           works.'
            It would be interesting to know on what scientific basis Dr Morton has drawn this conclusion, particularly in the light of
            our own Dr Roberts' Health Report at the end of last year.

Air quality campaigners are broadening out their approach after the prosecution of Castle Cement, Clitheroe.

They have reacted angrily to a statement by general manager Mr Ian Sutheran that they want the plant closed.

"We have never said anything of the sort, but do want the plant operating in a proper manner, and supervised in a proper manner by the Environment Agency," says the chairman of the local branch of Friends of the Earth, Mr J.D. Mortimer.

"Whether the plant should close is a matter for the authorities."

The prosecution was long overdue, says Mr Mortimer, and only involved sulphur dioxide, no account being taken of other pollutants.

Friends of the Earth takes the view that there should be an independant regulator, a comprehensive health survey, and an independant public inquiry into the whole situation on the Ribble Valley.

"The claim by the firm's barrister that there is 'no evidence' of serious health effects is meaningless, when no health survey has been carried out since Cemfuel was introduced.

"Castle Cement is one of a clutch of industries whose emissions fail to disperse," claims Mr Mortimer. "But we believe that no purpose is served by defamation, but will co-operate with any meaningful initiative which recognises the true state of affairs.

"If Castle Cement wish to be a good neighbour, they should act accordingly. At the moment, it operates an entirely reactive policy, taking action only in response to complaints. But turning down the kilns may actually worsen matters."

Friends of the Earth feel that the controversy is now in a new era, due to the prosecution, however limited it was. Pressure will now be increased all round.

January 18th

The area's health chief says that new figures again confirm the good health of the Clitheroe people.

And he also believes that a full-scale health study of the type demanded by some campaigners is not technically possible locally.

Director of Public Health Dr Steven Morton is collecting more data - including the latest available on cancer - before publishing the results.

But he repeated to the Advertiser & Times this week that local people are healthier than most others in East Lancashire and indeed the North West Region.

The latest investigations were revealed at one of the regular meetings between Ribble Valley Borough Council, the East Lancashire Health Authority and the Environment Agency.

People at the meeting asked the doctor to place the information on public record "to refute claims made within the local community".

Dr Morton says he hopes to meet local general practitioners to check if they have any concerns which may not be reflected in the figures.

"They have been collected specifically to address the concerns about health expressed by some people in the Ribble Valley," says Dr Morton.

"But the local population is just not big enough for a health survey of the kind mentioned by the Parlimentary Committees, and by some campaigners.

"It would need the number of people who live in several towns to be surveyed over a long period."

The doctor pointed out that experience in other fields, such as nuclear radiation, had shown that even where surveys had been carried out, the results needed very careful analysis.
 

• Latest results from the automatic monitoring stations at Chatburn and Waddington show that the air quality at both is within the "best" category. The Waddington figures included a slight increase in sulphur dioxide, thought it was well within the limits.

See also:
Disease problem of the 'very small sub-set' - letter from a local resident the following week
Firm presents new evidence over kiln - how this same story was represented by Castle Cement in the North Wales press

PEOPLE living down wind of the chimneys at Castle Cement works at Clitheroe may have been subjected to dangerous doses of cancer-causing dioxins one morning last month.

That is the claimof the local branch of Friends of the Earth, which demanded action from the Environment Agency and Ribble Valley Borough Council.

Retired financial adviser Mr Alan Egar saw a cloud of smoke in the sky as he drove past the works on March 20th. "I stopped the car and sniffed. It was a chemical /steam-engine type smell," he said.
When he went to Ribble Valley Borough Council offices and obtained a print-out of the readings from the automatic monitors at Lillands, he was astonished to find levels of PM10's - particulates said to contain cancer-causing dioxins - had averaged nearly double the permitted levels over a three-hour period.
Readings showed that at 2-15pm on March 20th levels had soared to 155.4 - more than three times the 50 ceiling.

Now Mr Egar and colleagues from Friends of the Earth are campaigning for action.
There were disparities between readings from the two monitors, one at Lillands, the other at Chatburn, proving, they say that the monitors are faulty.

They believe the air monitor at Chatburn has been giving false wind direction for months.
Mr Egar said an officer at Ribble Valley had agreed that one of the monitors had been faulty for three months, but had been repaired in recent days.

They want Castle Cement to take more action over the emissions levels and they want better monitors to keep an eye on what the chimneys are pumping into the atmosphere after burning Cemfuel to make cement.

Mr Egar agreed that, although emissions were exceeded for part of March 20th , Castle Cement was not breaking the law, because they were within legal levels when emissions were averaged out over the 24 hours.

But, to hammer home claims of the dangers of the emission – even at legal levels – Mr Egar had obtained a copy of a letter used at an inquiry into the use of Cemfuel last year.

The letter, from Dr Stephen Morton, East Lancashire Health Authority’s director of Public Health, said he  considered any level of particulates in the air as dangerous.

The letter stated; “We do not know of any threshold below which we can say that particulates are not harmful.”

Mr Egar said: “They have no right to pollute the air we breathe.  We don’t want the place to close down. The last thing we want is any loss of jobs.  But we want something done about the harmful emissions from those chimneys.  This has been going on for seven years.  The health problems may not rise for 20 years.  These dioxins get into cows milk and mothers milk. The Environment Agency defends Castle Cement in the pollution of the Ribble Valley.  They just turn a blind eye to it all,” he claimed.

Mr Bill Kembery, chairman of the local branch of Friends of the Earth alleged: “Two out of three days, Castle Cement is polluting the Ribble Valley.  Most times it pollutes the rural areas and no one takes any notice.”

Mr Kembery, who lives near Wilpshire, added: “I am 90% self-sufficient in vegetables, so I am eating these dioxins as well as breathing them in”.

Mr John Isherwood for the Environment Agency, said that by coincidence one of its officers was in the area on 20th March and found no cause for alarm.

He said the complaint from Friends of the Earth was “a red herring”.
“These figures at first sight look quite high. It is only when you stand back and look at them in perspective it isn’t an issue at all,” he added.

He pointed out that the laws permitting an average of 50 micrograms of particulates during 24 hours were not due to come into force until the  end of 2004.

The content of dioxins in particulates was very minute, he added.  There were, he said, more dioxins existing naturally on the Isle of Skye and the North Pole to where they are naturally born on prevailing wind currents.

But he admitted there had been a 90-degree error in the Chatburn monitor giving the wind direction.

A spokesman for Castle Cement said: “ Having spoken with Ribble Valley Borough Council on the reading from this monitor, we are satisfied no emission limits were breached on the day in question.
“It would appear that the Friends of the Earth have misinterpreted the results from the monitor in that the average for that day was around 30 parts per billion.  It would have had to be over 50 parts per billion for the limit to have been breached.”

Mr James Russell, environmental health manager at Ribble Valley Borough Council, said the emission were within present quality standards.

He said the day in question was “fairly windy” and the high reading for that part of the day could have been caused by particles blown up from the land or the nearby quarry.

Readings of other contents of the emissions, like a very low reading of sulphur dioxide, led to this conclusion.

“The emissions are well within the government standards for air quality," he said.

by John Turner

Residents of a Clitheroe estate have decided not to follow advice from Castle Cement and wash their cars with vinegar.

"It would smell as if I worked in a fish and chip shop," said one of the Balmoral Estate residents.

The advice came after residents had been pressing the company for answers over coatings of fine dust which regularly covers their cars, garden furniture and window frames.

When the dust gets wet it sticks and is difficult to remove. They claim that it is abrasive and leaves marks behind after washing.

the main campaigner - who asked for his identity not to be publicly revealed - this weeks sent a dossier of correspondence to the Managing Director of Castle Cement in Birmingham.

He was angry at his complaints not being dealt with efficiently by staff at the Clitheroe works.

He also sent a copy of the correspondence, which began in August, to Ribble Valley Borough Council and Ribble Valley MP Mr Nigel Evans.

His covering letter states: " I have no desire to see Castle Cement closed, I simply want them to clean up their act and stop dumping their rubbish on me.

"If this dust was purely quarry dust, then I would accept that there is very little that can be done to control that.

"However, this stuff is different, and presumably comes from the production processes. As such, it must be contollable.

"It is deposited on our cars, houses and gardens and cannot simply be brushed off. It sticks to surfaces when there is any moisture at all. The resultant damage can clearly be seen on car bodywork, garden furniture, PVC window frames and conservatories."

He said the advice to wash the cars in vinegar came from Castle Cement's Mr Chris Fish.

"He demonstrated that the dust could be removed by washing the car with neat vinegar (not very practical or satisfactory) and it did not improve the state of the paintwork," wrote the complainant.

He first realised that something was wrong when one of  his two cars had been parked at Heathrow Airport for two weeks and remained clean, complared to the car l;eft parked at his home in Clitheroe.

He told the Advertiser & Times that all his neighbours complained of the dust.

"One neighbour had been writing to Castle Cement, but had given up writing because he was getting nowhere," he added.

He said he was sure the dust came from within Castel Cement Works.

"I am positive they can control it - because there hasn't been any for three weeks since I stepped up my campaign," he said.

One of the letters to the company stated: "If one of our other neighbours constanly emptied their vacuum cleaner over the fence onto our house, garden furniture and cars, I am sure that if they continued after reasonable requests to stop, then they would be considered illegal. Are Castle Cement any different? Surely, you are not above the law?"

by John Turner

A firm of solicitors has signed up 161 Clitheroe people who want to take Castle Cement to court in a massive joint action, alleging chest complaints and other ailments have been caused by the output from the Ribblesdale Works chimneys.

A team of people has been knocking on doors in Clitheroe and the area in recent days offering to represent people on a 'No Win, No Fee' basis.

Even employees of Castle Cement have been targeted by the team.

But a leading local Friends of the Earth activist has already told solicitor Mr Sentley Wilson, of Doncaster,: "You are wasting your time."

Mr Wilson told the Advertiser & Times: "I am currently undertaking preliminary investigations on behalf of  potential clients to see whether or not we can claim.

"We have a potential 161 clients in Clitheroe within the catchment of the factory. They are all people with chest complaints of one sort or another or breathing problems. Some are more acute than others.

"There are people who have complaints which go beyond breathing complaints, but we haven't investigated those yet," he added.

Mr Wilson, who said his firm was seeking a base in Liverpool, where they were involved in a similar action with another company, said they had consulting engineers who were ready to undertake research to establish exactly the content of the fumes from the chimneys, and they would also be examining empirical evidence they had uncovered.

"We are trying to work out whether there is a viable case in civil law," said Mr Wilson.

The team which knocked on doors in Clitheroe has been asking people to take out insurance policies to cover the cost of prosecution. In the event of success in court, the interest would be paid, along with damages, by Castle Cement, or their insurers, he said.

Mr Wilson said: " the people concerned sign a Consumer Credit Agreement to fund the research work then - yes, there is no such thing as a free lunch - they will get a bill for interest on that money. The reality is, therefore, that if they are successful and end up having to pay that interest then at least they will have some money to pay the interest with."

He added: "Group litigation action is a fairly new animal. Everybody's feeling their way a little bit."

One of the people called in on the early stages by Mr Wilson was Friends of the Earth activist Mrs Linda England, of Worston.

"To be quite honest, he came to me because I have files dating back to the year dot on Castle Cement," she said this week.

"He came to pick my brains, but I spent two hours trying to persuade him not to bother. I believe he on a sticky wicket. He is not exactly impartial. He is looking to make money out of it."

She told him Castle Cement was not a isolated plant and there were other sources which could be held responsible.

"Each of them can blame the other and there is nobody, in my opinion, who can actually say a child in Clitheroe has asthma because of Castle Cement, because three of them are putting out pollutants of one kind or another.

"He seems very genuine, but they are not in it for charity. He could make a lot of money out of it. I tried to tell him that I don't think he has a hope in hell of winning. It could take eight to ten years. How much money are they going to rack up in that time?

Mrs England said that Mr Wilson had told her he was surprised at the reaction from the people they called on.

"He said he was surprised. People were snapping his hand off. He said he had never come across so many families with two or three children with asthma," she said.

A Castle Cement spokesman said: "There is absolutely no reason why people cannot live healthily in the Ribble Valley. Studies by East Lancashire Health Authority, for example, found there is no evidence to suggest that industry, including Castle Cement, has caused illness."

An official report for the Department of Health by the Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants in April 1999, came back with the finding that "none of the evidence they had examined suggested that particles released locally are likely to pose a special risk to health".

The committee, which had access to recent health data collected by East Lancashire Health Authority, examined hospital admission rates for asthma and for any respiratory illness, mortality data  and prescribing data from general practice and could not find evidence to support the assertion that the health of residents in the Clitheroe area is being adversly affected by emissions from local industry.

"Indeed, people living in Clitheroe tend to have lower-than-average values compared to people living elsewhere in the health authority," stated the committee's report.

Coincidentally, as the legal firm's team was knocking on Clitheroe doors, the Welsh Assembly delivered a decision which will allow  Castle Cement to mothball two of it's kilns at Clitheroe.

The controversial wet kilns 5 and 6 at the Ribblesdale Works look set to be shut down within three years now the government has given the go-ahead has been given for a new kiln to be built at their Padeswood plant in North-East Wales.

A Castle Cement spokesman said: "The investment in the new kiln at Padeswood will bring significant improvements to the company's overall environmental performance.

"It allows us to mothball our two less energy-efficient wet process kilns at Ribblesdale Works, whilst maintaining our superior dry process kiln 7 with its state-of-the-art gas scrubber."

CANK NOTE
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