DURING their stay in Clitheroe in 1995, scientists from London suffered eye irritation, burning throats and asthma attacks, or smelled strong odour, on 11 days out of 15.

Many of these took place in local school playgrounds - Moorlands, Waddington, West Bradford and Chatburn. Castle Cement was identified as the cause.

By then, Castle Cement had already put a cone on kiln 7 and also highered the chimney the previous year - all apparently to no effect. The scientists returned to London and residents continued to suffer the identical health effects when exposed to the plumes.

Castle Cement's authorisation was changed in January 1996, requiring an urgent solution to the problem of plume grounding, the cause of the ill-health, as outlined by the Department of Health in HM Press Release HM 337, of December 1995, re-released in January 1996. Complaints of odour and ill-health have continued in the intervening years and after the 'scrubber' was installed in 1998.

The Environment Agency have now changed direction. The official line appears to say that plume grounding has not been a problem with kiln 7 since it was highered in 1994, and there is no evidence of health effects.

Recently, the agency granted permission for Castle Cement to operate without the scrubber for any number of times in a day of up to four hours duration without even needing to notify the agency, so that maintenance can be carried out for any number of reasons. 'Trials' using hazardous wastes are not allowed under the new 'protocol' where there is inadequate dispersion - so again the inference is that there is no problem at Clitheroe.

What is the source of this wisdom? Computer modelling! - the same programme will be used to assess what we the public are exposed to - not real time monitors in our community.

The basis of this 'modelling' is an assumption that the ground is flat and the wind direction, speed etc is the same as the coastal airports of Blackpool and Liverpool and from Ringway on the flat Cheshire plain, together with a site from the other side of the Pennines; hardly typical of Clitheroe!

Not surprisingly, without the hills and river valley and with irrelevant weather data, the computer modelling shows there is no problem with plume grounding from kiln 7.

This modelling was commissioned in 1997 by the Environment Agency long after they had accepted Castle Cement's own data in April 1996. This showed the worse polluted place was exposed to over four times the EU Health limit for sulphur dioxide.

This site was "on the top of the hill in the middle of nowhere."

The turning point appears to have been when it was pointed out that their own figures explained why the residents of Higher Heights Farm - exactly on the spot - could be expected to suffer even worse than the scientists had done.

The Environment Agency got over that problem by taking away the hills and by filling the valley - perhaps they should be re-christened the 'flat earth society.'

MARY V HORNER, Higher Heights Farm, Bolton-by-Bowland.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.