Anti-Sellafield campaigners yesterday questioned new research which claimed a common virus was responsible for high rates of leukaemia in the area around the nuclear reprocessing plant at Cumbria.
The study said "population mixing" had spread the virus among susceptible young people. The authors of the study, Ms Heather Dickinson and Ms Louise Parker, two researchers from Newcastle University, claimed that when people from urban areas mixed with rural communities the virus could spread. The study claimed that the large number of nuclear staff who had moved into the Cumbria area over the years might have increased the spread. The influential cancer specialist, Sir Richard Doll, supported the linkage between leukaemia and population mixing and said the study was sufficient evidence "to make us say that it is established".
However, a local group opposed to Sellafield, Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (CORE), said the study was "another orchestrated attempt to shift attention away from radiation, particularly with the privatisation of Sellafield about to take place".
According to the study, children in Cumbria were more likely to develop leukaemia if both their parents came from outside the area. The study used records of almost 120,000 children born in Cumbria between 1969 and 1989.
The other finding was that children were considerably more at risk if they were born in an area where a higher than average number of residents were newcomers or people born outside Cumbria.
This supports a thesis first proposed by Prof Leo Kinlen of Oxford University who said that the virus responsible could be carried by many people without harm, but others could contract leukaemia because of it.
Prof Kinlen, who has done work in the area for more than a decade, has stated that cancer clusters happen in rural areas where there is a high proportion of people from all over the country because they are exposed to a mix of infections for which they have no immunity.
A spokeswoman for CORE, Ms Janine Allis Smith, whose son has leukaemia, released a letter written to her by Prof Doll in 1989 in which he said: "I am personally far from convinced that a virus plays any part in the production of childhood leukaemia in this country." In a copy of the letter seen by The Irish Times, he said: "Only one factor is firmly established as a cause of childhood leukaemia, namely, ionizing radiation."
However, he stated that the idea that viruses played a part was "scientifically attractive". "Not only because many leukaemias in animals are caused by viruses but also because it could explain some of the epidemiological findings. The possibility, therefore, cannot be excluded," he said.
Ms Smith said British Nuclear Fuels had paid out millions of pounds in compensation to workers suffering for leukaemia and other cancers "based on a probability of just 20 per cent that their cancers were caused by radiation".