🔗 Share this article

A local mother and Fraser's father received heartbreaking information in 2018 when their young son their child was confirmed to have a uncommon form of childhood cancer.

24 months of gruelling treatment came next, involving cancer medications, radiotherapy, and immune system treatments before a bone marrow procedure. The young boy, by age three, made a “miraculous recovery” from the procedure, with physicians declaring the illness in recovery.

During this period that Alison, aged thirty-six, began investigating answers. She could not stop thinking about comments made by healthcare workers at the time of her son’s diagnosis. “It keeps us up at night wondering how Fraser got his illness,” a consultant had informed her.

“We can't sleep wondering how he got his disease,” a doctor had told her.

Past Events

The negligent management of enormous amounts of toxic materials after the shutdown of a major industrial facility in this community in 1979 had “widely acknowledged,” said Alison. A legal proceeding linked the local authority's mismanagement of the site to a series of birth defects in local children during the previous decades.

Increasingly, Gaffney started to link the situation to her own. “[Fraser’s cancer] is not inherited,” she said. “What could cause this? … It has to be down to the area. So many children [with] illness.

“Each person here is acquainted with a person who’s got a youngster [with] cancer. That’s not normal.”

Community Action

Gaffney and Hinde started to contact other families in Corby with similar stories – among them some of Alison's ex-school friends at a local school – and the collective began compiling thorough information on those impacted. They now lead a movement advocating for about 130 families with cases of youth disease going back to 1988.

The collective has been calling on the local authority to investigate any connections between occurrences of childhood cancer in the town and the decommissioning of the plant. In the coming weeks, medical experts are set to publish their analysis of whether the area has had a unusually high rate of occurrences of childhood cancer for its inhabitants of the local community.

“Our only goal is to attempt to safeguard coming generations so they won't experience the suffering that we've endured,” said Alison.

Legal Precedents

The ruling in the legal case accepted that, between the 1980s and 1990s, enormous amounts of contaminated materials from the steel plant were transported “regularly” from the south of Corby to a designated site in the opposite end – with “large quantities” of toxic waste carried and dumped on public roads and “large volumes” of particulate matter generated by the reclamation.

However, it also referenced findings from the Environment Agency in 1997 that found stockpiles of toxic substances that had been abandoned at this location were later extracted in “substantial volumes”.

Expanding Concerns

The campaign leader suspects waste was not exclusively placed at the main disposal area but in different locations of the municipality. In recent developments, she applauded a “significant progress” after local authorities said it would examine soil that could be polluted and investigate where contaminated substances was deposited.

Gaffney said council staff acknowledged in the meeting that they were unaware where the areas of toxic materials could be. “They said: ‘We're uncertain where these sites are. Documentation is missing, we have nothing on it.’”

Local Backing

The official statement was also welcomed by a community member, a pastoral lead at a elementary institution, whose young child, Bella, was found to have a hematologic malignancy in recent months.

“I had to shave my nine-year-old daughter's scalp because her tresses was coming out from the drugs she had to take to kill her illness. So actually it’s in everyone's benefit, it’s in the child's wellbeing [for the council] to share that data,” she said.

“Countless residents in the community that have been diagnosed with pediatric illness and I believe it’s too much to ignore – it demands examination. This is unusual.”

Family Experiences

Another resident, 31, who is employed in business and now resides elsewhere, said families deserved “full transparency and clarity” from the government.

Lyons’s family member, Eve, succumbed on in recent years after being diagnosed with a uncommon malignancy at the age of nine. Her sister, who collected money for medical research, was “one of the most adorable, funniest and kindest” people, the sister recalled.

Her parent remembers the impact of the closure of the steel plant on the community, Lyons said. “She said you were unable to place your hand in ahead of you because [of] the red ash.”

“This situation has persisted since I was approximately about early childhood. It's too long and it is negligence toward the local residents.”

Historical Connections

Another family member, a community member, was one of several parents involved in the 2009 claim against the former government after her infant was born with a foot condition. Her husband, her partner, was one of the truck operators participating in transporting materials from the steelworks. Their experience was depicted in a media production, and demonstrated the woman removing the debris from her partner's pants.

The campaign leader said the campaign group has been approached by informants who were participating in the placement of waste in the area.