PEOPLE in Britain could be facing an increased risk of cancer from having
unknowingly eaten food contaminated by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in
1986, according to a former government scientist.
John Jeffers, who was director of the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE)
for 10 years, says that monitoring of radiation in food such as milk after
Chernobyl by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) was
鈥渉alf-hearted鈥� and 鈥渇airly ridiculous鈥�. No systematic efforts were made to trace
where food had become contaminated, he says. He recalls that a high level of
radioactivity was detected on some parsley, but claims it was never followed
up.
After ITE staff from the Merlewood Research Station in Cumbria measured
Chernobyl鈥檚 pollution on grasslands, they bought up all the local supplies of
powdered milk and bottled water for their families, says Jeffers. Two weekends
after the accident, staff also withdrew their children from a competition to
build cairns on the high fells 鈥渇or safety鈥檚 sake鈥�. Jeffers claims that the
Department of the Environment refused to allow him to talk publicly about the
contamination his staff had found. When he did publish some of his results, he
was threatened with the sack. 鈥淚 got some letters so stiff they were written on
plywood,鈥� he tells a BBC Radio 4 programme this week.
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Jeffers believes that children, nursing mothers and people recovering from
serious illnesses should have been advised not to drink milk for three weeks
after the accident. People who drink milk contaminated with iodine-131, a
short-lived radioactive isotope released by Chernobyl, might run an increased
risk of thyroid cancer. At the time the government issued no health warnings
about milk.
In the immediate aftermath of Chernobyl there was no government funding into
the behaviour of radioactivity in moorlands, says Jeffers. 鈥淲e could have
learned a great deal about how radionuclides moved through different ecosystems,
but we fluffed it.鈥�
Jeffers鈥� criticisms of the government are backed by Dave Horrill, a radiation
scientist at ITE in Cumbria for 24 years until he retired in 1995. MAFF鈥檚
post-Chernobyl monitoring was 鈥渉aphazard and patchy鈥� and research opportunities
were missed, he says. The current head of the ITE radioecology section, Brenda
Howard, says she would have taken a personal decision not to feed her children
Cumbrian cow鈥檚 milk in the days immediately after the accident.
MAFF, however, defends its monitoring. It points out that in 1986 it tested
28 490 samples of milk, vegetables, fruit, cereals and sheep for radiation.
Iodine levels in milk reached only a fifth of the safety limits recommended by
the government鈥檚 National Radiological Protection Board, it says. MAFF鈥檚 overall
performance was praised by the House of Commons Select Committee on Agriculture
in 1988, although it did say that additional monitoring of milk 鈥渨ould have been
产别苍别蹿颈肠颈补濒鈥�.
The ITE, which is part of the government-funded Natural Environment Research
Council, is one of Britain鈥檚 leading centres of scientific expertise on
radiation in the environment. Jeffers, a respected statistician, was
instrumental in setting up the institute in 1973.