MINISTRY of Defence (MoD) scientists have refused to analyse radioactive contamination from Dalgety Bay in Fife because of the risk it could give them cancer, official minutes of a meeting have revealed.
The MoD has been resisting demands to pay for a clean-up of the pollution from old military planes for the last 20 years. It has persistently played down the possible health effects for members of the public.
The revelation that its own scientists are "not particularly keen" to come into contact with the contamination will increase the pressure on UK ministers to act. The MoD's position was condemned last night as "contradictory", "unacceptable" and "scandalous".
Scottish Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead described the disclosure as "disturbing" and promised he would contact the new Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, about it. "Foot-dragging by MoD officials must not continue to delay a final clean-up," he told the Sunday Herald.
"Public safety is the number one priority, and the MoD must be completely open and transparent. We absolutely must get to the root cause of this repeated contamination of Dalgety Bay."
Yesterday, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) found another 33 particles of radioactive pollution on the foreshore at Dalgety Bay, a few metres from a public footpath. One of them was small enough to be swallowed by a child, and was sufficiently radioactive to be a "cause for concern", according to Sepa.
Last weekend, Sepa dug up a lump of radioactive metal near the footpath that was 10 times more radioactive that anything found before, and a serious hazard. As a result, a section of the foreshore has been cordoned off by Fife Council, and warning signs erected.
Since September, Sepa has found and removed more than 100 radioactive particles from near the footpath and from around the slipway of a popular local yachting club. That brings the total number found on the foreshore since 1990 to more than 1800.
DALGETY Bay was the site of the old Donibristle military airfield, where a large number of aircraft were dismantled after the end of the second world war. The dials in the planes were painted with luminous, radioactive radium so they could be read at night. The dials were incinerated and the resulting clinker dumped as landfill to help reclaim part of the headland on the bay. Radioactive contamination in the area was discovered by accident in 1990.
A series of surveys since then have suggested that the foreshore is being continuously repolluted by at least 100 particles a year. Sepa's experts think some of the particles are being swept ashore from the headland by sea currents.
The MoD's fear of working with the contamination has been uncovered by the minutes of a meeting in Edinburgh of the Dalgety Bay Risk Assessment Group in March 2009. The MoD's position has not changed since then. The meeting was an attempt to get Sepa and the MoD to agree a way of assessing the health hazards from the pollution. It failed because of acrimonious disagreements between them, and the group has not met again.
At the meeting, Sepa's radiation specialist, Paul Dale, argued that a cross-section of the radioactive particles needed to be properly analysed. He was opposed by Ron Brown (RB), principal scientist at the MoD's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in Hampshire.
The minutes record: "RB stated that MoD analysts are not particularly keen to work with these samples due to concerns over dose rates from high-activity samples. RB also advised that cost was an issue."
"It was unbelievable," said Dale yesterday. "He was saying that it would be hazardous for scientists, but not for children on the beach. That's contradictory."
The MoD's refusal to monitor the pollution meant that Sepa had to conduct its own surveys, resulting in the recent finds. Sepa's scientists will return to the foreshore today, and later this week, to check for more contamination.
The MoD has been criticised by one of its own former senior safety officials, Fred Dawson. He worked for the MoD for 31 years before he retired as head of the radiation protection policy team in 2009.
"This shows that the MoD was well aware of the hazard from the radium fragments," he said. "It also shows how the MoD was continuing to try and distance itself from being held liable for the contamination and wanted to spend as little as possible."
The situation was described as "scandalous" by Stan Blackley, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, and "unacceptable" by Colin McPhail, chairman of the Dalgety Bay and Hillend Community Council. The MoD did not dispute the accuracy of the minutes yesterday, and it did not accept that the pollution was a hazard to members of the public. It said it supported Sepa's work in disposing of particles recovered from the foreshore. An MoD spokesman said it had a "serious commitment" to helping to find a long-term solution.
l Leader comment, page 34
16 Oct, 2011--
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