Community Members Pursuing Clarity About Contaminated Materials Sites

Alison Gaffney and her partner were given life-altering news in 2018 when their 17-month-old their baby was diagnosed with a uncommon form of leukaemia.

Two years of intensive medical care ensued, involving drug treatments, radiotherapy, and immunotherapy before a bone marrow procedure. Their son, at three years old, made a remarkable improvement from the operation, with physicians declaring the disease in remission.

During this period that Alison, in her mid-thirties, began looking for answers. She could not stop thinking about observations made by hospital staff at the time of her child's illness. “We lose sleep wondering how he got his cancer,” a doctor had told her.

“We can't sleep wondering how he got his disease,” a specialist had informed her.

Historical Context

The botched disposal of vast quantities of toxic materials after the cessation of a major industrial facility in this community in 1979 had “always been a known thing,” said the mother. A legal proceeding connected the council’s negligent clean-up of the site to a series of congenital abnormalities in local children during the twentieth century.

Gradually, Gaffney started to connect the situation to her own. “[His illness] is not hereditary,” she stated. “What's the explanation? … It has to be down to the community. So many children [with] illness.

“Every resident knows someone who’s got a child [with] cancer. That's unusual.”

Community Action

Gaffney and Hinde started to connect with more parents in Corby with parallel situations – featuring some of Gaffney’s former classmates at their former educational institution – and the collective began assembling comprehensive documentation on those impacted. They now head a movement advocating for about numerous households with situations of pediatric illness starting from 1988.

The group has been calling on the local authority to investigate any relationships between occurrences of childhood cancer in the town and the closure of the industrial site. At the end of this month, medical experts are set to publish their evaluation of whether the town has had a unusually high rate of occurrences of pediatric illness for its residents of seventy thousand.

“What we seek is to try and protect future people so they won't experience the suffering that we've experienced,” said Gaffney.

Historical Context

The ruling in the 2009 civil claim accepted that, between 1983 and 1997, vast quantities of contaminated materials from the steel plant were transported “regularly” from the southern part of town to a specific location in the northern section – with “large quantities” of hazardous materials carried and dropped on local thoroughfares and “substantial quantities” of particulate matter generated by the remediation.

However, it also referenced findings from the Environment Agency in 1997 that identified stockpiles of hazardous waste that had been deposited at the site were later removed in “significant amounts”.

Growing Suspicions

Alison maintains waste was not merely deposited at the primary location but in different locations of the municipality. Lately, she welcomed a “important advancement” after local authorities said it would test ground that could be tainted and investigate where contaminated substances was deposited.

Alison said local officials acknowledged in the discussion that they lacked information where the areas of toxic materials could be. “They explained: ‘We're uncertain where these sites are. Documentation is missing, we possess no information.’”

Public Endorsement

The official statement was also supported by another parent, a educational worker at a local school, whose school-aged girl, her daughter, was confirmed to have leukaemia in recent months.

“I was forced to trim my young child's hair because her tresses was coming out from the treatments she had to administer to destroy her cancer. Therefore it’s in the community's concern, it’s in Bella’s interest [for the council] to share that knowledge,” she said.

“Numerous residents in the community that have been found to have youth disease and I just feel it’s too much to ignore – it needs looking at. This can’t be normal.”

Individual Accounts

Meg Lyons, in her early thirties, who is employed in business and now lives in London, said households earned “full transparency and clarity” from the council.

Lyons’s young sibling, her sister, succumbed on 24 June 2017 after being found to have a uncommon malignancy at the childhood. The girl, who fundraised for health organizations, was “among the lovable, humorous and caring” individuals, she recalled.

Her mother recollects the consequence of the shutdown of the manufacturing site on the town, Lyons stated. “She recalled you could not position your hand in before you because [of] the particulate matter.”

“These issues have continued since around about my youth. This duration is unreasonable and it is negligence toward the local residents.”

Previous Involvement

Another family member, a local resident, was part of multiple parents participating in the legal case against the then Corby council after her infant was born with a foot condition. Her spouse, Derek, was one of the vehicle operators involved in transporting materials from the manufacturing facility. Their story was shown in a recent series, and showed the woman cleaning the debris from her husband’s jeans.

Gaffney said the organization has been reached out to by individuals with information who were involved in the dumping of substances in the area.