Cover up on tip blast

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WELL OF COURSE, THAT WAS ALL PRE-BOMB SCIENCE YOU KNOW!

Last October Socialist Organiser reported on a toxic waste tip exploding in Stoke Trent. That came three weeks after an official report saying that the government had no clear idea of what was dumped, where.

Now a tip in Edinburgh has explod ed. Lothian Labour councillor PAUL NOLAN reports.

Tons of refuse went flying into the air and rained down over an adjacent football pitch, houses, a primary school, and surrounding streets for a distance of over two miles.

Eye-witnesses describe hearing an enormous bang which sent shudders through nearby buildings, then a huge 100 feet high 'roman candle' shooting into the night sky, followed by a black cloud of incinerated refuse descending into the area.

Within a few hours local Labour councillors David Brown and myself, along with Edinburgh East MP Gavin Strang, visited the site and met with council officials, police and mines inspectorate.

The Niddrie and Craigmillar tenants' and residents' association visited people in the area to assess the damage and possible dangers. The elected representatives spent an intensive next few days quizzing officials to find out what caused the explosion and if there was any likelihood of another blast.

Officials had in their possession documents and photographs that showed that the explosion was caused by up to ten tons of Barium Carbonate, Barium Nitrate, Strontium Oxalate, aluminium powder. magnesium, antimony, charcoal, sulphur, and arsenic sulphide. These were all buried together in the same pit, some in steel drums, others in paper bags — with huge quantities just shovelled in loose.

But they refused to give this information to elected councillors and an MP. This vital evidence was passed on through sympathetic trade unionists.

Over the years, chemicals had mixed each other and devel into a self-igniting bom Combustion In 1978 Edinburgh District Council officials recommended to the Environmental Health Committee that the site where the chemicals were buried should be made into a refuse tip, without informing councillors what had been dumped there eight years previously. Experts believe that a combination of heat caused by the combustion of the rubbish tip and earth movement from heavy plant used at the tip were contributory factors that led to the chemicals mixing and exploding.

Dr William Gibb, a senior lecturer at Straththe iped clyde University's Department of Chemistry and an acknowledged expert on the investigation of explosions said that "the chemicals should never have been buried together, but taken away individually and disposed of separately"

After pressure from local Labour representatives and tenants the Council has agreed to take the advice of a Department of the Environment expert and excavate the refuse tip down to the pit and find out what is there.

Watergate

Brown and I are : insisting that a guarantee is given to remove all chemicals that are left and have called on the Health and Safety Executive to carry out a full inquiry into why the chemicals were dumped there, why councillors were not told about this danger, and why there was a 'Watergate' style cover-up to stop elected representatives and the public finding out the Interested in science and socialism? Your job to do with science? Contact Soc ialist Organiser Science Group, c/o 28 Middle Lane, London N8

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no.79 April