🔗 Share this article

A local mother and Andy Hinde faced devastating information in 2018 when their young son their child was diagnosed with a rare type of leukaemia.

An extended period of demanding therapies came next, comprising cancer medications, targeted radiation, and immune system treatments before a bone marrow procedure. Their son, then aged three, made a extraordinary turnaround from the surgery, with doctors confirming the disease in regression.

It was at this point that Alison, aged thirty-six, began looking for causes. She remained troubled by remarks made by medical professionals at the time of her Fraser's condition. “We lose sleep wondering how he got his disease,” a specialist had shared with her.

“It keeps us up at night wondering how he got his cancer,” a specialist had told her.

Background Information

The improper handling of millions of tonnes of hazardous substances after the closure of a major industrial facility in the town in 1979 had “always been a known thing,” said the mother. A legal proceeding associated the improper remediation efforts of the site to a cluster of birth defects in local children during the 1980s and 1990s.

Gradually, the concerned mother started to link the situation to her own. “[The disease] is not genetic,” she explained. “What's the explanation? … It has to be down to the community. So many children [with] illness.

“Every resident knows somebody who’s got a youngster [with] the disease. That’s not normal.”

Grassroots Movement

Alison and Andy started to reach out to other families in the town with similar stories – among them some of the mother's former classmates at a local school – and the group began compiling detailed records on those involved. They now head a movement representing about many parents with cases of pediatric illness dating back to 1988.

The collective has been calling on the local authority to research any connections between cases of pediatric illness in Corby and the closure of the facility. In the coming weeks, health authorities are preparing to share their analysis of whether the area has had a unusually high rate of instances of pediatric illness for its population of the local community.

“All we want is to work to secure coming generations so they won't experience the hardship that we’ve been through,” said Alison.

Legal Precedents

The ruling in the court proceeding accepted that, between a fourteen-year period, enormous amounts of toxic substances from the manufacturing site were relocated “typically” from the one area to a designated site in the northern section – with “large quantities” of contaminated substances carried and dropped on local thoroughfares and “considerable amounts” of airborne particles produced by the cleanup.

Nevertheless, it also cited findings from the Environment Agency in 1997 that discovered accumulations of toxic substances that had been abandoned at the site were later taken away in “large quantities”.

Additional Issues

Gaffney suspects contaminated materials was not exclusively placed at the Deene Quarry site but in different locations of the community. Lately, she welcomed a “major step forward” after municipal government said it would analyze ground that could be tainted and investigate where hazardous materials was dumped.

Alison said local officials confirmed in the meeting that they were unaware where the areas of contaminated waste could be. “They said: ‘We don’t know where these sites are. We have no documentation, we possess no information.’”

Public Endorsement

The government declaration was also welcomed by a community member, a educational worker at a local school, whose nine-year-old daughter, Bella, was found to have a hematologic malignancy in recent months.

“I needed to cut my little girl's hair because her tresses was shedding from the treatments she had to use to kill her illness. Therefore it’s in the community's concern, it’s in the child's wellbeing [for the council] to disclose that knowledge,” she explained.

“There are so many residents in the town that have been confirmed to have youth disease and I just feel it’s impossible to overlook – it needs looking at. This is unusual.”

Personal Stories

Meg Lyons, aged thirty-one, who works in sales and now resides elsewhere, said families merited “absolute honesty and transparency” from the council.

Lyons’s 11-year-old sister, Eve, died on 24 June 2017 after being found to have a specific illness at the childhood. Eve, who collected money for health organizations, was “one of the most charming, entertaining and compassionate” individuals, Lyons recalled.

Her mother recalls the impact of the shutdown of the manufacturing site on the community, Lyons stated. “She recalled you could not position your hand in ahead of you because [of] the red ash.”

“These issues have continued since around about three years old. It's too long and it is negligence toward the people of Corby.”

Past Associations

Another family member, a local resident, was part of multiple households participating in the 2009 claim against the then Corby council after her baby was born with a congenital issue. Her partner, Derek, was a member of the lorry drivers involved in handling substances from the industrial site. Their situation was depicted in a media production, and illustrated the mother cleaning the dust from her husband’s jeans.

Gaffney said the campaign group has been approached by informants who were responsible for the dumping of substances in the community.