Sir, - Greenpeace is joining Friends of the Earth in a legal action against the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant. The Taoiseach, Mr Bertie Ahern, is following a similar line and intends to put as much political pressure as possible on the British government to stop this toxic insanity.
Back home, our Environment Minister, Mr Noel Dempsey, has paved the political path for Indaver, a Belgian incineration company, to produce 37,000 tonnes of dioxin-laden hazardous toxic ashes every year at Carranstown. Dioxin is perhaps best known as a contaminate of the herbicide Agent Orange, used in the Vietnam War to kill foliage.
The World Health Organisation recognises it as a known carcinogen, causing cancer in every species ever tested. The US Environmental Protection Agency believes it is responsible for 100 cancer deaths every day in the US.
It causes Vitamin K deficiency in babies, disrupts the immune system, mimics hormone function, and interrupts the thyroid, which in turn causes developmental and neurological problems in children. It has been calculated that up to 8,000 cancer cases will result in Belgium due to the dioxin food contamination that took place there in 1999.
Wherever these ashes are used, in roads, paths, playing fields, landfills, building blocks or anywhere else, they can justifiably be considered a reservoir of dioxins that can be released at any time.
BBC's Newsnight featured a report on the use of a mixture of highly contaminated incinerator fly ash and bottom ash on the allotments at Byker, Newcastle, and in breeze-block buildings and road aggregate at the Edmonton incinerator in London.
It is bewildering to think that there are people working in the incineration industry who, in order to reduce companies' costs, have no qualms about spreading a compound estimated to be 167,000 times more toxic than cyanide on areas where children play. - Yours, etc.,
Tom Prendeville, Earthwatch, Friends of the Earth, Upper Camden Street, Dublin 2.