Southampton - Pollution is causing more people to die of cancer each year, a team of scientists has claimed. Over the last 30 years cancer deaths in the West have increased on average by about 1 per cent each year despite improved treatments.
Now researchers from Southampton University suggest this is because of an increase in economic activity and its by-product, pollution. England and Wales together represented the fourth most densely populated country in the developed world, with male cancer deaths the sixth highest and female deaths the second highest in the world.
In a separate development poison-eating trees are being developed to help clean up Britain's industrial wasteland blighted by toxic pollutants. Some of the first sites pinpointed for "bio remediation" are currently so toxic that anyone entering them has to wear a full protective suit.
The "clean earth" project has been launched by the Wolverhampton based National Urban Forestry Unit, which picked three sites near the M6 motorway for mass planting.