Community Members Pursuing Answers Regarding Contaminated Materials Sites

Alison Gaffney and her partner faced heartbreaking news in 2018 when their 17-month-old their child was diagnosed with a rare type of childhood cancer.

An extended period of intensive medical care followed, involving drug treatments, targeted radiation, and immunotherapy before a bone marrow procedure. The young boy, then aged three, made a remarkable improvement from the surgery, with medical staff announcing the disease in recovery.

As Fraser improved that Gaffney, aged thirty-six, began looking for causes. She could not stop thinking about comments made by hospital staff at the time of her son’s diagnosis. “We lose sleep wondering how our son got his disease,” a consultant had informed her.

“We're constantly wondering wondering how Fraser got his disease,” a specialist had informed her.

Historical Context

The improper handling of enormous amounts of hazardous substances after the closure of the town's primary employer in Corby in 1979 had “always been a known thing,” said the mother. A court ruling associated the council’s negligent clean-up of the site to a cluster of birth defects in town residents during the twentieth century.

Increasingly, Alison started to associate the situation to her own. “[The disease] is not genetic,” she said. “What's the explanation? … It’s got to be down to the area. All these kids [with] cancer.

“Each person here is acquainted with a person who’s got a youngster [with] illness. That's unusual.”

Community Action

Alison and Andy started to connect with more parents in the town with similar stories – including some of the mother's ex-school friends at Brooke Weston Academy – and the organization began assembling comprehensive documentation on those impacted. They now lead a movement advocating for about 130 families with situations of youth disease going back to 1988.

The collective has been urging the municipal government to investigate any links between cases of youth disease in this community and the decommissioning of the facility. In the coming weeks, public health officials are set to publish their analysis of whether the town has had a disproportionate number of instances of childhood cancer for its inhabitants of the local community.

“What we seek is to work to secure future people so they can avoid the suffering that we’ve been through,” said Alison.

Historical Context

The ruling in the legal case acknowledged that, between a fourteen-year period, enormous amounts of hazardous waste from the steel plant were moved “almost invariably” from the south of Corby to a specific location in the opposite end – with “large quantities” of hazardous materials carried and dropped on community streets and “considerable amounts” of airborne particles produced by the remediation.

However, it also referenced findings from the environmental authorities in 1997 that identified accumulations of toxic substances that had been abandoned at Deene Quarry were later taken away in “substantial volumes”.

Growing Suspicions

Gaffney believes contaminated materials was not exclusively placed at the Deene Quarry site but in other parts of the community. Recently, she welcomed a “major step forward” after municipal government said it would analyze soil that could be tainted and study where hazardous materials was dumped.

Alison said council staff confirmed in the meeting that they did not know where the locations of hazardous substances could be. “They said: ‘We're uncertain where these locations are. Documentation is missing, there's no data available.’”

Community Support

The council’s announcement was also welcomed by a community member, a educational worker at a local school, whose school-aged girl, her daughter, was diagnosed with leukaemia in June this year.

“I was forced to trim my little girl's hair because her locks was falling out from the treatments she had to administer to destroy her disease. Consequently it’s in our interest, it’s in her daughter's welfare [for the council] to reveal that data,” she stated.

“There are so many residents in the town that have been diagnosed with childhood cancer and It seems it’s cannot be dismissed – it requires investigation. This can’t be normal.”

Personal Stories

A community member, 31, who works in sales and now lives in London, said families deserved “full transparency and openness” from the local authority.

Her young sibling, the girl, died on in recent years after being found to have a specific illness at the childhood. Her sister, who collected money for medical research, was “one of the most charming, funniest and kindest” people, she recalled.

Her mother recalls the impact of the cessation of the industrial facility on the community, Lyons said. “She mentioned you couldn’t put your hand in front of your face because [of] the red ash.”

“These issues have continued since I was approximately about three years old. It's too long and it is irresponsibility toward the community members.”

Past Associations

Lyons’s cousin, a local resident, was part of multiple families involved in the 2009 claim against the previous administration after her infant was born with a congenital issue. Her partner, her partner, was among the truck operators responsible for removing waste from the manufacturing facility. Their story was shown in a recent series, and illustrated the mother beating the dust from her partner's pants.

The campaign leader said the campaign group has been reached out to by informants who were participating in the placement of substances in the town.