If you ignore the snap-links box and just double click on the pictures themselves – they should open enlarged in a separate window (which you might need to maximize depending on your settings).

Please let me know if you still experience problems.

Regards
Nicola – MMAG

My only excuse is that my knee just has had operation so could not join in the wonderful march so very best of luck. Our love meaning my hubby and 2 dogs love the peaceful of Forest and wild life so a very big NO. As I am profoundly deaf, I have had enough of strong vibrations of lorries, etc so a very big good luck to u all again.

Jill

Capel, Surrey [quashed in High Court]
St Dennis, Cornwall [stopped March 2009, but no appeal pending]
Invergordon, Scotland [stopped 18 August 2009]
Dunbar, Scotland [stopped after Invergordon]
Essington. Staffs [stopped June or July 2009]

Both the Surrey Mirror and the Dorking Advertiser printed articles on 22 May 2008 in which they reported the failure of the Health Protection Agency to examine any relevant health or mortality data at electoral ward level around any incinerator.

More info on incinerators at http://www.ukhr.org where you can see Heallth Protection Agency’s letter to me dated 8 June 2009 admitting above.

In January 2008, both above papers printed maps of mine showing high infant mortality wards downwind of incinerators at Coventry, Edmonton and Kirklees and low infant death rates in the upwind wards.

The STIG website in Cornwall has articles about my incinerator/infant mortality research from Harrow Observer of 3 May 2007 and South London Press of 4 May 2007. There’s also the following Sunday Express article of 27 April 2007 which was printed a few days after the Enfield Advertiser’s 3-page article “THE BABY KILLER?” which had headline splashed across picture of Edmonton incinerator on front page.

The Express On Sunday: Incinerator fumes link to hundreds of infant deaths
Express on Sunday, The (London, England) – Sunday, April 29, 2007
Author: Lucy Johnston and Martyn Halle
HUNDREDS of baby deaths a year are being linked to pollution emitted by public w aste incinerators . Researchers have established a significantly higher death rate among children up to one year old when they live under smoke from an incinerator chimney. There is a lower death rate for children who live out of the path of incinerator emissions. The report comes after a detailed analysis of death rates across the country. Dr Dick van Steenis, a retired GP who helped head the study, said: “The incinerators are burning all sorts of material from domestic waste to hazardous chemical and radioactive waste. “The danger comes from the particles released into the atmosphere. They are of a size that can be easily inhaled into the lung where they lodge and cause damage to the body.” The most damaging particle, known as PM 2.5, is particularly harmful to youngsters he said. “Newborn babies are more likely to succumb to damage from chemical pollutants in these inhaled particles.” He added: “Around every single incinerator , infant mortality rates, asthma rates and autism rates are sky-high. “That’s if you live under the smoke stream from the chimney. In areas nearby which don’t get the smoke, the death rate is either at the national average or lower.” The data has been collected from the latest official statistics covering the years 2003 to 2005. Enfield in north London has the UK’s largest incinerator at Edmonton. The death rate for babies up one year old in west of the borough is virtually nil. But in eastern Enfield, which sits downwind of the incinerator and is exposed to smoke from the chimney, the death rate is between 10 and 12 per thousand of population. The national average death rate for babies up to a year is 5.2 per thousand. Dr van Steenis said that he had accounted for other factors that could increase the death rate such as social deprivation. He pointed out, for example, that “leafy middle-class areas” of west London were affected by emissions from a big incinerator at Colnbrook near Slough. In some parts around this plant infant mortality rates are treble the national average. “We compared those areas with nearby well-to-do wards that didn’t get emissions and they were significantly lower than the national average.” Professor Vyvyan Howard, an expert on environmental pollution from the University of Ulster, said dioxins released in the burning of rubbish had been shown to be cancer causing. He said that while incinerator filters take out 99 per cent of particles, it is the ultra fine one per cent – the PM 2.5s – that can have chronic effects on health. London Waste, which owns the Edmonton incinerator , said it had not seen the van Steenis report. A spokesman said: “We use a proven technology with a track record of safe operation and it is recognised throughout Europe as a safe and efficient method of energy generation. “There is no consistent evidence that our facilities cause adverse health effects. “We continually monitor particulates such as PM 2.5s and the levels released are lower than the maximum permitted.”

You can e-mail me via ukhr.org and Dr Dick van Steenis’ contact details are on Country Doctor website at bottom of home page.

Kind regards,

Michael Ryan,
Shrewsbury

I have sent the following letter to Nadine Dorries about the incinerator.

Dear Nadine Dorries,

I am writing to you with great concern regarding the proposed building of an incinerator in The Marston Vale, capable of burning 600,000 tonnes of house hold waste. As you are well aware The Marston Vale has had more than its fair share of pollution over the years. The brickworks started over 100 years ago and has only just ended. There are two massive landfill sites that will be emitting methane for an undetermined amount of time. The health effects of this I am sure are unknown. Needless to say the landfill sites would be much smaller if Bedfordshire not taken in waste from London. Just as we in The Marston Vale thought we could start to breathe clean air, the sites proposed for a huge incinerator just happen to be the very place that has been polluted for so many years from the brickworks and the landfill sites.

Talking to the Covanta staff I obtained information that the proposed incinerator will take waste from other counties. Why should Bedfordshire have to do this? Bedfordshire has taken in London waste for years. There is no health surveillance proposed indicating that pollution generated is of no concern to Covanta or local government. Background pollution monitoring is to be carried out by Covanta and not an independent organisation. There will be a significant increase in heavy good vehicles transporting waste from other areas. The loss in equity in peoples houses when this project is given the go ahead is again of no concern to Covanta. I am not sure that people realise that they will loose a significant amount of equity in their houses if this project goes ahead. Out of fifteen proposed sites for the incinerator around Bedfordshire, eleven were in The Marston Vale. The geology of The Marston Vale is an amphitheatre which means that pollution generated will accumulate in certain weather conditions. This happened with regularity with the pollution from the brickwork chimneys.

Nadine you said at the meeting in Marston Moretaine for the proposed Eco town, that the general public have the choice whether they wanted the town or not under a Conservative government. You haven’t given us the same choice over the incinerator. I believe you said it was because council tax will increase. Please give us the choice whether we want to pay more in council tax. There are alternatives and I am sure that you know of them. Yes, they will cost more but they are the future. Incinerators are past technology, hazardous to health and will contribute significantly to global warming.

If this project goes ahead it will be another punch in the face for The Marston Vale and unfortunately it will be a knockout from which it will never recover.

Yours Sincerely

Jeff Joynson
Local Resident

CC Marston Moretaine action group

A heartfelt thank you to all involved.

Carole Peachey-May