Fluorides & Fluoridation

Welcome to FluoridationFacts.com, incorporating the Australian Fluoridation News Archive and HREX fluoride-related files.

Please note: This website is mostly inactive. The nature of this website will also change to an archive-cum-database for out-of-print magazine articles, dental health data and related publications, and scientific literature. The Australian Fluoridation News has also moved to another server based in Australia. However, the 'AFN' will be backed-up on this website on a regular basis. The Webmaster, 7th August, 2005.

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Atomic waste dumped into London's water for 50 years

The X Files

Atomic waste dumped into London's water for 50 years

by ANDREW GILLIGAN and ROB EVANS, Sunday Telegraph, 13th July, 1997.

UP T0 20,000 gallons of water containing tritium and other radioactive substances have been pumped into London's drinking water supply every day for the past 50 years, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Previously secret documents have also shown that although some scientists from the Atomic Energy Authority had fears about the safety of pumping any amount of radioactivity into the Thames these were concealed from the water authorities.

The documents disclose that ministers were deeply concerned at the scope of the AEA's dumping ambitions, with one Tory giving a warning that the maximum emission limit for tritium proposed by the scientists would have caused a "measurable genetic effect" on the capital's population.

The scientists were not allowed this high a limit, but did win a seven-fold increase in tritium discharges despite fierce opposition from the water boards.

Recently-declassified documents in the Public Record Office show that discharges from the authority's sites at Aldermaston, Harwell and Amersham to the Thames began secretly in 1948, with he Metropolitan Water Board expressing "great regret and dissatisfaction" at the potential effects on the drinking supply.

The radioactive effluent was fed into the river at Sutton Courtenay, near Abingdon, Pangbourne, near Reading, and Staines, Middlesex, where it came in via the river Colne. All three are upstream of the intake pipes for London's drinking water.

The authority insisted that the discharges were safe. But an "extremely confidential" memo - withheld from the water board - stressed that it was "vitally important" that people were dissuaded from paddling, bathing or sailing in the cut which led from the out pipe to the river.

Water warning: The Atomic Weapons Establishment Aldermaston outfall into the Thames at Pangbourne. Photograph: Peter Payne

Outflow water from Harwell, Aldermaston and Amersham, containing tritium and other radioactive materials, is pumped into the Thames at Sutton Courtenay and Pangbourne and into the River Colne at Maple Cross which flows into the Thames at Staines. Downstream from these entry points extraction is made for drinking water at Walton-on-Thames and Hampton.

Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston

Harwell Atomic Energy Research Establishment

At that time, the maximum permitted discharge of tritium was only seven curies a month. But in the Sixties, frustrated at the limits this placed on their work, scientists at Aldermaston, Harwell and Amersham pressed the government to raise this to 200 curies a month.

Most ministers favoured the scheme. Lord Hailsham, the Lord President, said "an excess of caution" should not hamper Aldermaston's "efficient operation" - but Charles Hill, the minister of state at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and a qualified doctor, said that the proposal would produce genetic disorders in the population.

Other officials believed Dr Hill's concerns were exaggerated, but even the authority was in no doubt about the dangers if the secret got out. A document from its own public relations officer criticised the authorities justification of the dumping, saying: "I do not think `financial cost' is an argument which will carry much weight with prospective parents foreseeing the possibility of malformed babies."

Although Aldermaston scientists scoffed at the ministry's "ultra-caution", Dr Hill's view had influence and an "interim limit" of 50 curies a month - still more than seven times the previous authorisation - was agreed.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment, the new name for Aldermaston, insists that radioactive discharges to the Thames are tiny, heavily diluted and have "virtually no effect on the environment".

But William Peden, of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said: "Even if the discharges are not dangerous individually, their cumulative effect risks damaging the content and riverbed of the Thames."

Waste water containing tritium is a by-product of preparing compounds needed for scientific and medical research. Increasing demand for research led to increasing quantities of waste.