from Sunday Herald, 30 May 2010
Scotland’s first, longest and most disputed freedom of information case has ended up keeping vital cancer statistics secret.
After two investigations by the Scottish information commissioner, Kevin Dunion, plus appeals to the Court of Session in Edinburgh and the House of Lords in London, numbers that might shed light on the links between children’s blood cancer and radioactive pollution have been kept under wraps.
The Scottish Green Party, which made the original request, is frustrated and annoyed. The Scottish Health Service, which fought to keep the information confidential, sounds relieved.
Back at the beginning of 2005, Michael Collie, a researcher for the then Green MSP, Chris Ballance, asked the Scottish health service for the annual incidence of childhood leukaemia in every census ward in Dumfries and Galloway from 1990 to 2003.
They wanted to test widespread suspicions that the debilitating and potentially fatal cancer could be caused by radioactive contamination. Plutonium from the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria washes up on the Solway coast, and has been detected around the shoreline.
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