From Keith Shaw.
FRONT page comments (JEP, 7 September) from the Deputy Medical Officer of Health about Jersey’s higher cancer rates than the UK and possible causes were alarming, but old news.

I believe that I read those figures in the Medical Officer of Health’s annual report for 2007.
Dr Rosemary Geller’s claims at an Incinerator Liaison meeting on 16 October 2008 about the causes of the cancers were discounted a month earlier at the Town Hall by Dr Dick Van Steenis.

Dr Van Steenis was invited to the Island by Constable Simon Crowcroft in an attempt to balance discussions surrounding the intention to build a replacement for Jersey’s old mass burn municipal waste incinerator at La Collette.

One of the contentious issues was the use of an old technology, ie incineration – a process that would continue to produce thousands of tonnes of hazardous toxic waste ash. This ash causes considerable long-term problems with its handling and storage, due to high cost and danger.

Robert Le Brocq recently referred to the problems recognised in the early 1980s surrounding the Bellozanne Incinerator – evidently its emission levels were 20 times worse than similar UK operations.

Apparently insufficient remedial work was ever carried out to protect local residents or children in the school built in its fume path.

Dr Van Steenis had spent considerable time in the UK with a research colleague looking at infant mortality rates, incidences of cancers, chest infections, depression and suicides and reduced levels of behaviour and educational performance. His research results evidently identified incineration as a major contributor to deficiencies listed above, which was the reason why he was invited to speak in Jersey.

During his brief stay, Dr Van Steenis also commented critically on four other potential pollution sources (some with existing records of being sources of previous issues). Both JEC chimneys (La Collette and Queen’s Road), the Hospital and the Crematorium.

Dr Van Steenis’s research had given him extensive experience of working to reduce harm from the disposal of domestic waste. Incineration was his least preferred option for many reasons.

Dr Geller was quoted as saying that the new Mass Burn Municipal Waste Incinerator would be cleaner than the old one at Bellozanne. No one disagreed with that statement, however. But it did not provide a great deal of confidence, when people realise how bad Bellozanne has been for possibly 30 years.

We don’t just want cleaner – we should have had an absolute guarantee that zero pollution will be released into the surrounding air we breathe.

As Mr Le Brocq pointed out recently, bolting a new incinerator onto an old chimney is a solution to a problem, but is it the best one we could manage, and how long will it last?