Peter Smith: ...so it's still under the same old thing as we were in Camelford, before it was privatised. That's one point, I'd like to make. On the matter of joined up government I mean if Labour is talking about joined up government, we should really have had a Health Minister sitting alongside you. I think we really should have...

(Audience Agreement)

... and this is why, Sir, we really do need a public enquiry. With great respect, you are only appraised of certain things by your civil servants. They're not going to tell you about things they did wrong or their friends or their senior colleagues did wrong and with great respect I think it is only by granting a public enquiry - where everybody who's accountable gets called in front of the enquiry and has to make everybody accountable down the line - that we're going to see a change in this country.

(Applause, agreement)

Paul Tyler: Somebody over here wants to come in. Yes?

Douglas Cross: Yes, I'd like to ask Mr Hydes about the consequential, whether in fact you deal with the consequential effects of water contamination at treatment works. One of the major problems here which has never been properly investigated was the secondary effects of this material getting into the hot water systems. My wife had a bath which was blue - we had it analysed after the tank had been flushed several times in clean water. We had 23 mg per litre of copper; the official limit in the EEC is 3mg. How far do you as a Drinking Water Inspectorate go? The water authority said, "well you don't drink water out of the hot tap, that's not a sensible thing to do." Ask any elderly person who's in a hurry for a cup of tea where they get the water from to get a quick cup of tea. So we had this weird situation where half the picture, in fact a third, two thirds of a picture was not looked at. Nobody looked at the effect of sulphuric acid, a scheduled poison, seven tons of it in the water supply was never investigated, never commented on by the medical authorities.

Nigel Jones: How did the sulphuric acid get there? Douglas Cross: It's the breakdown product of aluminium sulphate. That's why they use liming in the treatment works to break that, to reduce that. Nigel Jones: What does aluminium do to lead? The lead piping, what. Was the problem? Douglas Cross: The problem with aluminium sulphate in the water supply was that it released the acid, the acid was not neutralised so you got dilute sulphuric acid in the system of copper pipes with lead solder or tin solder. Elementary school chemistry - how do you make a battery? Two metals and acid. And what happens to the metals?

The metals dissolve electrolytically. You get active dissolving of these metals and that is why we were faced with this cocktail. Nobody has looked at this problem. I've looked into the toxicology of copper and it is serious. There are conditions, there is one condition known as Indian Childhood Cirrhosis - very well known in India and that is exposure to low levels of copper in the water supply. Nothing was looked at here. Many of the symptoms that people are complaining about could be accounted for by copper toxicity. Including the things like ecxsema and so on. Nigel Jones: Does everybody's hot water tanks, they're all made of copper aren't they? Douglas Cross: I had to go onto Radio Cornwall on an emergency thing because somebody from the authorities said, 'Oh it's okay for visitors,' and I pointed out that there were many places that were empty because of this and that the visitors holiday homes had hot tanks that had not been flushed for several weeks, it was a lethal mixture just waiting for visitors to get to.

Paul Tyler: Yes. lady here.

Sue Saunders: I would like to ask the Water Inspectorate, you say that all these rules and regulations are in place to stop aluminium poisoning, hopefully in this country. I would like to ask you what's being done for people that are on private boreholes, mostly farmers, and I am myself a tenant farmer.

The landlord put in a bore hole and earlier this year I was poisoned again with aluminium water that was two and a half times the legal limit, only a small amount this time, and enquired further to farms around me and I was told that they have to replace their immersion heaters every two or three years because they rot. Now what will the water inspectorate and what can they do to help these people because they need educating because they don't realise that they were drinking contaminated water. Douglas Cross:

This is a problem really of unbuffered water for the water supply when these private supplies are not treated and it's possibly because they're acid.

Paul Tyler: Any more questions for the Inspectorate? Yes, Liz. E. Sigmond: There is one very interesting point that was raised by a biochemist from the Romans Institute with Arnice which included Walter Roberts and Jan Ere, and Doug Cross and others, and that was that the contact tank at Lowermoor was supposed to be cleaned out every six months and had not been cleaned out for at least eighteen months, that the detritus at the bottom of that tank was almost up to the outlet pipe and that. When that tank was drained, this substance could be walked on.

It was liked coke, and that came from one of the Water Authority employees. The man from the Romans said, "that detritus would have contained metabolites, which would be released by water containing a pH of 4". Nobody investigated what the result of water of pH 4 going across that detritus might have been to add to all the other contaminants that we thought about. This place had been mismanaged for years, had been starved of money, and what on earth was actually in the water? We still do not know.

Paul Tyler: Yes, one more question.

Ray Bowler: I'd like to add a little but more to this. I came across an article in New Scientist, published just after the court cases had been settled, even settled out of court, and it was a report by a group from I think, Cambridge University, a study group in Cambridge, about what people ingested through our water supply and there was a very elegant test analysing the contents of people's hair as a catalogue of what's been ingested, and it said in this article which was the first time I came across that and it's the last time it's really been spoken about since, that I'm concerned about uranium levels in the water because uranium occurs naturally. The acid content of this aluminium sulphate would have dissolved the uranium as well that was already in the sludge in the pipes and metabolised in a way that that could be absorbed.

Of course, shortly after that we had a leukaemia cluster at the local school and there were two groups that looked into the research of that, and again they were never introduced to that and what happened and I did find both the gentlemen concerned with that, got mixed responses from London, one of them was very interested, one of them was very disinterested, that aluminium in our drinking water metabolised because of its acidity could possibly have any consequences on leukaemia, but I would like to say here, the cocktail of metals that were laid down on people's bones, and the bone biopsies demonstrated if they contained uranium as well, the fact that the bone marrow might be radiated by this toxide of metals is a very real possibility that nobody has spoken of so far. It gets worse.

Paul Tyler: That's a medley, indeed a cocktail of questions. Now, I mean the key issue for us all is, I think, you may not be able to answer them all here, but this is an opportunity which I am very grateful for people to raise these issues and I hope that they will be of equal concern to the Inspectorate.

Owen Hynes: Yes. Thank you for some very interesting questions. I have to be honest with you, I can't answer in detail all of the points that have been made, but I will do my best. First of all on aluminium. The law has a standard for aluminium and it is 200 micrograms per litre in the water supply to premises. That is the law that the Drinking Water Inspectorate has to enforce.

If a company exceeds that standard, then the Drinking Water Inspectorate would take enforcement action against the company and require the company to take remedial action to ensure that they met the standard. We have no direct power to stop a company using aluminium sulphate as a treatment chemical, provided it meets the standard in the water supply. However, I have noted that a number of you are saying that you appear to be allergic to aluminium and that aluminium concentrations well below the standard mean that you feel that you can't drink the water or bathe in it, so I will take that point away with me and see if there is anything that I can do, given that I may not have the power, but anything that I can do in a persuasive way, to see if that can be rectified. I think the next question was to do with the consequential contamination that happened in the distribution system and clearly, not being involved at the time, it's very difficult for me to make any detailed comments, but I can made some general comments.

Aluminium sulphate is acidic, it has a low ph and therefore it will dissolve metals from materials that it comes in contact with, and so one would expect that the kinds of concentration of aluminium that were put into the supply to have a bad effect on plumbing materials and materials in hot water systems, so it's not surprising that the limited number of samples that were taken of that, did show high levels of copper, high levels of zinc, and I think occasionally, high levels of lead. I think probably a similar comment applies to the question of the detritus or deposits that were in the contact tank.

Those deposits were likely to reflect the source of water, which I understand is a sort of uplands source which is likely to be of low ph, probably got some coloured material in it, probably got some iron, manganese and aluminium present naturally from the gathering grounds of the source, and those substances would be present in the detritus in the contact tank and undoubtedly some of those substances would have been dissolved by the aluminium sulphate that went into the tank. All I can say on that is,

I would expect a water company to have proper maintenance procedures that set out how often they cleaned out their tanks and any other parts of their system and to follow those procedures, and certainly if the Drinking Water Inspectorate now got evidence of companies not following appropriate maintenance procedures, we would want to take some action against them.

And then a lady raised a question I think, of a private borehole. Again I have to be honest with you. The Drinking Water Inspectorate doesn't have any direct responsibilities for private water supplies. There are separate regulations on private water supplies and they are operated by the Local Authority. The Local Authority has a power to require owners of private supplies to improve them if they are not meeting the standards. And the standards for private water supplies are exactly the same as those for public supplies. So the answer in this particular case is for you to get in touch with your Local Authority, to explain the problem to your Local Authority and to ask them to investigate it. And if the owner of the private supply is breaching the standard, the Local Authority does have the power to take some action.

Then the final point I think was the question of uranium levels. Again, I have some difficulty in attempting to answer this, not having been involved at the time but clearly if there were small concentrations of uranium in the source water that may have deposited out in the contact tank or the system, there's the possibility that that was mobilised, dissolved in the water and people could have been exposed to it. We don't have a standard for uranium in our regulations.

Ray Bowler: Absolutely, it wouldn't normally be a problem, it's the acidity of the water, that made it available to the body.

Owen Hynes: It wouldn't normally be a problem. The World Health Organisation actually has a guideline value for uranium... er of two microgram's per litre, but that, that is a level that is regarded as safe for life-long consumption and I think it would be very unlikely that that kind of level would be exceeded for any significant length of time, but I'm only guessing, I have to be honest with you.

Ray Bowler: The way you just expressed that is the way everybody expresses it, it is unlikely to be of any interest - we have heard these expressions so many times.

Nigel Jones: Of course, we have a high background naturally in Cornwall, so it doesn't take much of a straw to break the camels back.

Owen Hynes: I think the point is that we're not... we're 12 years on, these investigations were not carried out at the time, and, and, we're not...

Ray Bowler: The question in Cambridge was put into action very quickly after the event but we were never told about the uranium until that paper was published in The New Scientist.

Paul Tyler: I think we'd like to pursue that, it's not one I'm aware of. I'm going to make a suggestion I hope this will be agreeable to everybody - I think if we could just go back to the health issues because I think that's a major concern and what I want to do is to break at half past one because Michael Meacher has agreed not only to talk to the media one to one but to talk to any of you who want to talk to him one to one and that really is a wonderful opportunity I think you'll agree, and we can then make the afternoon as informal as possible, but can we return please to the health issues, um sadly we er Dr. Jarvis is on call and has had to leave us but Dr. Nash is here - I would just like to be confident that GPs now feel that if there was a similar incident they would be given the appropriate back up support information that clearly was not there in 1988, and I whether you'd like to say something about your experience over the years since then ?

Dr Nash: Thank you for springing that on me Paul. I wasn't here unfortunately at the beginning of the meeting, but...

Nigel Jones: Sorry some of us can't turn round easily to hear you, or see you...

Paul Tyler: Come up, come up Dr. Nash: I was just saying unfortunately I wasn't here for the beginning of the meeting because I was in morning surgery, and came in during the last half hour. Perhaps some of the things I'll say will have already been said. Now, my recollection of the events of 12 years ago are still fairly fresh. I remember the particular dates because I was actually away during the night that the aluminium sulphate was deposited in the tank, But nevertheless I was back in surgery the following morning.

Liz Sigmund: Could you speak up a little Dr Nash ?

Dr. Nash: Sorry

Paul Tyler: Come in the middle, come in the middle

Dr. Nash: I was over in Delabole on the morning that we all got to here about this and I remember my receptionist making the tea and it was obviously undrinkable because the milk curdled in it, and I think I actually rang the water authority myself following that, and I was told that the water was safe, but at that point they didn't know what was in it, so... (Laughter from the platform and audience.)

Dr. Nash: My reaction to that was similar to most of the members in this hall, but we subsequently discovered what had gone on, and also discovered that the water authority were aware of it because they flushed out the mains into the local river killing most of the fish.

Nigel: Sixty thousand I think it was ... that was the figure sixty thousand

Dr. Nash: Well I'm sure they counted them one by one. There were ongoing problems as we all know as regards the residual contamination within the water mains and this went on as we are all aware for many months and we all ended up having our pipes swabbed and the water mains since that time have actually been replaced and I think that that process was encouraged by the water incident and I suppose that's one good result of it.

I actually had some compensation from the water authority myself not from the health point of view but because when they came round to sort the pipes out they forgot to tell us they were doing it in our area, at the time and a lot of the detritus was actually ingested by my domestic water system and we had to have the whole lot stripped out and the hot tank cleared and everything else, and so I sent them a bill for the plumbing. Health issues were evaded at the time, and I think that there were a lot of unfortunate circumstances regarding that.

I think that some of the initial investigations were perhaps not done in the best scientific way, and more as a sort of knee-jerk reaction, which although understandable has led to a lot of difficulty for further investigation because the waters should be so muddied. The consequences are that there are a lot of people who are... remain unhappy, who have had problems, whether or not those were caused by drinking the water, and I think that it just goes to show that 12 years further on, there is so much anxiety and so much disquiet among a significant proportion of the population.

I myself have been reassured by the institution of the Drinking Water Inspectorate and the very useful input into prevention and management of water incidents so I have confidence that this sort of incident is not likely to happen again. But I think we still have the problem of dealing with the ongoing problems regarding the incident, which we suffered in Camelford 12 years ago. I don't know how much use there is in a public enquiry myself although I know there are a lot of questions, which people want to have answered. But would it actually resolve any of the problems? I think that that's debatable. If anybody wants to ask me anything I'll try and answer any questions.

Paul Tyler: Quick Questions, yes I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that to you but I saw you slip in and it was irresistible ! Yes Liz.

Liz Sigmund: Dr Nash, did you have any patients who came to you with loss of toe nails and finger nails?

Dr. Nash: No

Liz Sigmund: If so to what did you ascribe this experience?

Dr. Nash: I don't believe I did, no.

Liz Sigmund: You didn't.

Bridget Pentecost: I was one of your patients Dr. Nash and I did.

Dr. Nash: I don't think you saw me.

Bridget: Yes I did, you came and saw me in hospital.

Liz: I can follow that up - we contacted...

Dr. Nash: My memory must have been affected.

(General laughter)

Liz Sigmund: I spoke to a dermatologist at Newcastle University, an expert particularly in finger nails and toe nails, and er, I described to him in outline what had happened and he said "well please forgive the pun, but he said if people are having distorted, and losing their toe nails and finger nails this could nail not only the type of chemical poisoning they've suffered but the route it was taking through the body".

He said "in fact I can tell you that a number of the Roman emperors knew that they were being poisoned because they had exactly this manifestation".

Now Richard Newman agreed that Professor Simon Schuster should come down and see a number of patients and I think she meant Dr. Nash knows all about this. There were a lot of people who were queuing up to see him - it was all arranged at the Health Centre in this town. Two days before this should have happened Sam Schuster rang up and apologised profusely and said he was unable to come because he had a lot of work - we feel that there might have been some pressure put upon him- but I don't believe that any real investigation of the I think substantial number of people who had nail loss, in fact a television team was in Doreen Skudder's house one day - when one of the patients came in - she said "well I can show you what's happened to my toe nails - excuse me" - she took off her tights and as she did she pulled off her big toe nail - and the crew were nearly sick - but this was common, this was quite common. Now nobody answered that question, nobody actually took Sam Schuster's place and said this is a profound piece of evidence about toxic poisoning.

It was put under the carpet and people were told "oh you've got a fungal infection". My husband has a fungal infection it certainly doesn't look like the people that I saw. It was a very very obvious sign of toxicological contamination and it was ignored, pushed under the carpet and the people were just left to get on with it. They still are suffering loss of toenails I know to this day.

-----------------------------------------