Radioactive chemicals pumped into Thames

Radioactive Waste "Discharged into London's Drinking Water"

Recently declassified documents reveal that the Atomic Energy Authority's establishments at Aldermaston, Harwell and Amersham have been discharging radioactive materials into the Thames, and that fears about the effect on the capital's water supply were concealed from the water authorities.

Levels of tritium and other radioactive chemicals exceeding the Government's set limit of seven curies a month are reported to have been regularly dumped in the Thames.

In the 1960s scientists are said to have pressed the Government to increase the output to 200 curies a month. But a Government minister, Dr Charles Hill, secretly warned in 1962 that increasing the level "would produce between 10 and 300 severely abnormal individuals per generation."

The Liberal Democrats' Environment spokesman, Norman Baker MP, said on Sunday: "Discharges of plutonium, tritium and up to a dozen other types of radioactive waste are still made each month into the Thames above the intakes for London's drinking water supply."

"The discharges began in 1948 despite advice from the government's own Medical Research Council that it could not guarantee the discharges were without risk to human health."

"To this day, the National Radiological Protection Board, the government's nuclear watchdog, states that no dose of radiation, however small, is safe. The situation is extremely worrying. It shows yet again the cavalier attitude of the nuclear industry towards human life and the environment."

Steve White of Thames Water dismisses "alarmist" report
Levels are "incredibly low"

A spokesman for the utility company Thames Water, Steve White, said the levels of radioactive material were extremely low, and the water was "perfectly safe" to drink.

One of the companies listed in Mr Baker's statement has denied pumping tritium into the Thames. Alan Huw Smith of Amersham International said: "We do not pump tritium into rivers and have not done so for a considerable number of years. We never dumped it in the Thames."

"Tritium discharged from products of Amersham research materials have always been trivial in comparison with discharges from the nuclear power industry and have never been shown to have had an impact on public health or the environment."