Environmental campaigners in Britain are calling on the government to curb the use of landfill sites containing toxic material. This follows the publication of a report yesterday that pregnant women living close to the sites were at an increased risk of giving birth to babies with birth defects.
The report, on the work of a team led by Dr Helen Dolk of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, found that babies born to women who lived within 1.8 miles of a landfill site were 33 per cent more likely to have spina bifida, holes in the heart or other birth defects.
However, the environmental group Friends of the Earth, said the research proved the need for the government to urgently address the issue of landfill sites and has called for their use to be restricted. There are about 8,000 landfill sites in Britain, most of which are based on the outskirts of major towns and cities and nearly 2,000 still have waste material dumped into them. The organisation's senior waste campaigner, Mr Mike Childs, described the findings as "extremely worrying".
Dr Dolk's study, published in the medical journal the Lancet, looked at 21 landfill sites across Britain, France, Italy, Denmark and Belgium. In Britain alone the study focused on six sites - three in the north of England, one in Glasgow and two in the northwestern Thames region, near London. The study, the first of its kind in Europe, identified 1,089 live and still births and terminations where birth defects were found and the mother lived within 4.2 miles of a landfill site. There were 2,366 births without defects in the same area. However, the report found a 33 per cent higher risk of defects in babies born to mothers living within 1.8 miles of a dumping site.
Despite the findings Dr Dolk's report is being viewed with a degree of scepticism among some in the medical community who have pointed out that the study has not established a causal link between the birth defects and the landfill sites. The Environmental Services Association, a group that represents some of Britain's waste management companies, has called for calm. The group's head of public affairs, Ms Janet Manning-Shaw, said: "The report should not be dismissed, but it should not be blown out of all proportion."
Dr Dolk said yesterday that more surveillance of landfill sites was needed to establish whether the birth defects were caused by the mother's close proximity to them.