29. Secret Contamination
I always believed that ReChem’s processing of PCBs would leave its mark on the local environment, but regardless of the way the University of East Anglia’s studies were progressing, I certainly wouldn’t have stuck my neck out on the TV programme without knowing something that the University didn’t.It was when the discussions on the writ were dithering, and when the University had gone quiet during the analytical phase of the study, I decided it was time to make the full details of the data available to my solicitor. Some of the story behind Rechem’s internal memos was in the public domain, due to Llew Smith’s UK and European parliamentary announcements, but the full details had always being too hot to handle.When Llew had first spoken of the memos at the European Parliament in September 1988, his need to protect their source restricted his freedom to inform and I had applied the same constraints in relation to their use in my defence. Former Rechem Special Operations Manager, Mike Sanger, was a reluctant informer who insisted on being unidentifiable, but who would reveal himself, if necessary, to help me. He assured me that he would be willing to testify in my defence if demanded to do so by the court.Despite his offer, I knew his fears and I remained reluctant to place him in a vulnerable position. Although I had previously primed my solicitor about the affair, I held back the dossier in my possession for use as a last resort.Three years into the writ and during the debate on Paul Murphy’s parliamentary early-day motion of July 1992, LLew Smith revisited his previous European Parliament revelations of Pontypool site contamination before I decided to give my solicitor Sally the uncut version of the of the 1987 story. I felt that recent events had diminished Rechem’s power and that the Rechem whistleblower was at reduced risk, so now I used his information as a lever that might accelerate the ending of the legal action.
The Sanger memos, with their ReChem letterhead, were at the surface of an affair which first turned my continual theorizing about Rechem into certainty. The two internal memoranda, relating to Mike’s uncovering of contamination at the Pontypool site, were exchanged with the Company’s managing director, Malcolm Lee in September 1987, when Mike was managing ReChem’s Special Operations Unit. The full force of the discoveries could only be felt when seen with the story behind the memos. I knew every word of the story and every digit in the data.
Llew Smith had pursued many aspects of the ReChem controversy, particularly those capable of being pushed along through European procedures. The double MP’s Crumlin office had increasingly become home from home for me and his efficient, enthusiastic staff gave me more help than I ever asked for, as well as undying encouragement. We were all on the same wavelength in relation to campaigning and constantly in touch with each other, but I had another connection with Llew’ office accommodation. He was a new MEP when I first spoke to him in 1985 and he put to me his idea for a conference to discuss the ReChem controversy, saying he could raise £5000 in funding from the E.E.C. Llew’s initiative drew me towards his original office in the run-down old thoroughfare leading to Newport’s docks district where I once lived. After being elected to the European parliament the previous year, Llew had set up office on the first floor of a former bank building at a junction in Commercial Road.From the outside, the place meant nothing to me but when I first entered, climbed the stairs, and walked through a back room to face a window overlooking the street, I knew exactly where I was. That room was the very place where I first met my wife, late on a Saturday night in October 1967, when I was twenty and she eighteen.I had known it as the flat of a mutual friend’s grandmother and it was at a party held there for Jane Holland that I first spotted Denise, in the spot near the window now occupied by the MEPs desk.
Now married fifteen years, by the time I went to Llew’s office in connection with toxic waste I was well versed in the who’s who of toxicology and incineration and I made a short list of people appropriate for his conference. Llew’s European funds could stretch only to traveling expenses and accommodation, so I needed to get the prospective participants interested in giving their time for nothing. I didn’t expect them to be so willing and with the exception of Roberto Fanelli at the Mario Negri Institute in Milan, who was unavailable but very helpful, three out of the four that I asked did agree to participate, including two from the United States. One was Illinois University’s Dr. Samuel Epstein, author of Hazardous Waste in America and The Politics of Cancer. I had been impressed when I read a transcript of a speech of his entitled: Why We Are Losing the War on Cancer. To complement Epstein’s toxicological approach with expertise in incinerator technology, I was equally delighted to get a “Yes” from Washington’s Dr. Edward Kleppinger. To provide the cutting edge on the toxic chemicals in question, there was also no hesitation from our own expert in the field, Dr. Alistair Hay, a professor at the University of Leeds and author of The Chemical Scythe: Lessons of 245T and Dioxin. Llew also brought in European PCB consultant Dr David Dundas and he asked EC environmental advisor Stanley Johnson to chair the conference, which took place on Saturday 27th April 1985 at County Hall in Cwmbran. My own acquaintance with Dr Stephen Farrow from Cardiff’s University Hospital meant that we had also had a noteworthy epidemiologist on the panel. Even before the conference began I felt that the presence of our unofficial international team of made a statement about intention to seek sense beyond the boundaries of bureaucracy. The risk was that our panel of experts would not find in our favour but after conducting their own brief investigation before the conference, they quickly concurred with our concerns and made their recommendations. In one afternoon, the high-profile conference raised the stature of the campaign enormously and perhaps it even lifted the company a little out of its comfort zone.
An unashamed socialist, Llew Smith was a constant pamphleteer for causes and campaigns, particularly involving the underprivileged and the environment. Llew was one of those old-fashioned MPs who never aspired to political prominence, but who prominently established a record electoral majority for MEPs. When he later became a member of the Westminster parliament as well as Europe’s he entered the record books again, this time for parliamentary questions.In 1987 Mike Sanger’s responsibilities at ReChem related to the acquisition and processing of PCB containing transformers. Following the MEP’s first phone call about the ReChem memos, Llew went to meet the nervous ex-manager at his home in Gloucestershire. After the two had first met, I was brought into affair, as was Ken Caldicott, John Urquhart from Newcastle University and Professor David Games from Swansea University. John was librarian at his University but he had an impressive sideline in statistics. Mike Sanger came to meet us on a Sunday at Llew’s new office, several miles west of Pontypool, where we would dissect his data, do some number crunching and assess the significance of the story. The upshot was that, unless Mike was prepared to put himself in the firing line, the material was too powerful for normal channels of publication, so as an alternative avenue Llew gave the contamination data the first airing in the European Parliament in a way that would not reveal the ex-Rechem man.On Tuesday September 13th 1988, the six o’clock news on HTV said:
A new row over pollution from the ReChem plant at Pontypool has been sparked off by a confidential document which was leaked to the South East Wales MP Llew Smith. Mr. Smith told the European Parliament this morning that Harwell Scientists had found high levels of contamination at the plant but ReChem say the report was based on mathematical error and that further tests showed the plant is safe.
The film showed Llew Smith speaking in the European Parliament and calling for an immediate inquiry by the European Commission. ReChem’s chief chemist, Dr. Peter Jones was interviewed in the studio. He claimed that some of the contamination figures appeared high because of faulty arithmetic, that further sampling showed everything was OK and that the story was old news anyway because the results had been published in the scientific journal Chemosphere. Llew was furious about ReChem’s response and sought to set the record straight. Two days later, BBC TV news put out a revised version, where Rechem confessed to contamination:
The chemical waste disposal company ReChem has confirmed today that high levels of PCB poison, high levels based on Californian guidelines, have been found in dust samples which were taken at its Pontypool plant.
However, in Rechem’s revised explanation, the details were glossed over and significance of the contamination was brushed aside as a “blip”. Over several more years Llew pursued the matter relentlessly, accessing company data through legally available trade union channels, in order to prise out from ReChem the facts he already new but couldn’t admit to knowing.I maintained my interest in the matter, not least for my own purposes, and I enjoyed an ongoing working relationship with Mike. Eventually I invited his comments on a report I’d produced giving a deep explanation of the data. I was concerned that my report might be too rough on Rechem but he thought I was being too soft and he gave me some advice in a letter beginning:
The events you are describing happened several years ago and I would expect, that to a large extent, public concern and interest in the subject has grown cold. . . . .I just wonder therefore if the document could be given more edge by stating quite bluntly that the evidence strongly suggests that something pretty dreadful was happening and was covered up by ReChem in a most shameful way. I suggest that the site contamination found in 1987 was not, as you put it, simply “alarming” or “significant”, it was frankly horrific and indicates either a major accident or persistent negligence and malpractice.
Mike knew exactly what had happened. He had supervised the acquisition of a consignment of PCB containing transformers. They were to be held on site at Pontypool awaiting further instructions for their processing. Mike arrived on site one February morning in 1987 to find the transformers had been incinerated without his agreement. He was concerned about the consequences and, suspecting the likelihood of contamination, on 12th February he took a sample of dust from the window ledge of his site office, which was known as the Special Operations Portakabin. The sample was obtained using a standard “wipe” of a specified surface area. Although not directly responsible for the monitoring of emissions or contamination, he covertly slipped his dust sample into a batch of samples destined for analysis at Harwell’s laboratories. He located the identity of his special sample amongst the test results returned from Harwell and the figures confirmed his hypothesis. Now even more concerned about the wider implications, he pursued the matter with the Managing Director Malcolm Lee, who agreed to a survey in which ten further site locations were sampled. After stirring things up through this sampling, Mike was suspended from duty and forbidden to visit or have contact with the Pontypool site. After returning to work, now demoted, his demise didn’t suppress his anxiety about the contamination. Instead, on 21st September, he pursued it again with the Managing Director, as he recorded in the first of the fascinating leaked memos:
You will recall our telephone conversation on 1st April this year when I reported to you the results of the Harwell analysis of a dust sample taken by me on 12th February, from a window ledge of the Special Operations Portakabin.
The analysis revealed levels of 2378 TCDF and of 2378 TCDD that were very high compared with levels recommended by the Californian authorities as being acceptable for public occupancy. They were also far higher than the levels recommended for occasional access by personnel aware of this contamination.
You assured me that an investigation into contamination generally on the Pontypool site would be carried out promptly. I would appreciate your confirmation that the investigation has now been completed and I look forward to seeing the results.
The reference to The Californian Guidelines indicated the absence of British standards for contamination by these chemicals. The guidelines were ingeniously derived, in 1983, by the Epidemiological Studies Section of the California Department of Heath Services, following a PCB transformer fire in a tower at the One Market Plaza office complex in San Francisco. Entitled “Interim Guidelines for Acceptable Exposure Levels in Office Settings Contaminated with PCB and PCB Combustion Products” they provided recommendations for maximum contamination levels for both continued occupancy of the workplace for up to 8 hours per day and for restricted access for up to 2 hours per month. The same guidelines were actually used commercially by ReChem, in the company’s assessment of contamination when dealing with clients.
On 23rd September, in the second of the leaked memos, Malcolm Lee replied to the first:
Thank you for your memo of 21st September 1987.
It has taken me some time to respond to you on this matter as we have had some problems with the results from Harwell owing to difficulties they experienced with their equipment, and it has also taken us some time to decide how best the results can be interpreted to be meaningful.
In line with our environmental monitoring policy, samples were taken on 3rd April around the plant at Pontypool and subsequently in order to assess the meaning of the results of these samples, a further study was undertaken on background levels many miles from ReChem’s sites in line with the policy that we have adopted since we began the environmental monitoring exercise.
The comments attributed to Dr. Stevens regarding what are considered to be safe levels in California intrigued us greatly as we have never been able to find recommendations made in other parts of the U.S.A. or the rest of the World and it has always been our policy to compare what are know to be normal background levels with the results that we find. It has been most useful to us in having available Dr. Peter Jones and his considerable experience in this field after having spent 17 years in the States specifically working on environmental matters.
The results of our monitoring exercise, together with the background levels that we are finding, are most reassuring, and it would appear that the levels found around our plant are entirely consistent with those levels that would be anticipated at a factory specifically dealing with large volumes of PCBs. We have to also say that in the experience of the normal background levels that we are finding the comments made by Dr. Stevens regarding safe levels for public occupancy are quite ridiculous. As an example, my office here in Gerards Cross was found to have a dioxin level approximately ten thousand times higher than his safe level.
I would conclude, therefore, by saying that although sampling by means of wiping a surface does not represent a very good method of determining levels of pollution, as clearly everything depends on how often the surface is cleaned and how often it is sampled, the results of our monitoring checks showed the situation to be entirely safe.
The letter appears to reject the validity of the Californian guidelines and shows ReChem as setting its own standards.
Until I received Mike’s comments on my own report, I was never certain of the precise circumstances that gave rise to the contamination. I thought it better for Mike that I didn’t know so that he had no fear of what I might say, although I sensed that the contamination wasn’t just linked to incineration. Still wary of watching eyes, his letter to me about my report flirted with the background to the leaked memos affair, in the form of a hypothesis that left little to the imagination. In doing so he challenged the precious concept of destruction efficiency, with:
. . . it is clear that leaking capacitors or transformer sections could be brought to the incinerator, dribbling PCB along the way. Following a superficial scorch, they could be removed from the hearth, all hot and dusty, humped across the site and tipped into skips for disposal as scrap or landfill. By this means gross contamination of PCB, PCDF and PCB could be spread across ReChem site and also transferred to a non-toxic landfill facility – while still maintaining (by ReChem’s definition) a destructive efficiency of the oft quoted 99.9999% . . . the ReChem definition conveniently assumes that all of the compound under consideration must be destroyed or emitted via the stack. It ignores the loss of any compound by spillage during the process of loading the incinerator door or other exits. It also discounts the premature removal of solid material (always referred to by ReChem as “ash” even if it consists of incombustible hunks of metal) which will be hot and dusty and may be contaminated with the compound it is intended to destroy, plus intermediate (and possibly more toxic) oxidation products, e.g. PCB plus furans and dioxins.
There followed a masterful calculation which really pulled the rug from under the regulatory view of destruction efficiency. He concluded that probably more contamination was discharged from non-stack sources in a very short period than theoretically came out of the stack in a year.
The amount of PCB being deposited as surface contamination on just part of the ReChem site in 1987 was therefore probably as much as, and probably more than. The total claimed by ReChem to have been discharged from the incinerator stack.
He also made the deduction:
The contamination recorded at the ReChem site in 1987 does not seem to be connected with stack emissions or “destructive efficiency” but points to the escape and dispersion of PCB by gross mishandling or processing problems. . . . and was it the observation of this practice, possible coupled with dissatisfaction in the way operations were being monitored, which prompted an employee to check the contamination for himself.
Mike ended his letter by making it clear that his hints and hypotheses could be utilised only as coming from “an employee” and not from him specifically, adding that he couldn’t afford to defend a legal action.
After interpreting the contamination figures and considering Mikes comments, for my defence I produced a final report on the leaked memos affair in which I derived numerous comparisons between the sampled contamination figures and the Californian Guidelines used commercially by ReChem. In dust above the entrance to reception, PCB contamination was 50 times above the Californian limit for continued occupancy, whilst total furans and dioxins were at least 2800 times the limit. The ratios were even greater when compared with the guideline for restricted access of 2 hours per month. Glaring excesses were repeated in other sample results. I always qualified my ratios with “at least”, explaining that the picture was actually worse than the numbers I had calculated, because the analytical results reported only the tetra-chlorinated types of furans and dioxins. I used Re-Chem’s own published survey of PCBs in soil in Wales, to illustrate the severity of the PCB contamination in the sample of soil take from opposite the Special Operations Portakabin. Here the level was three times the maximum that ReChem had found in Wales, 44 times the average in Wales, 73 times the maximum found within three kilometers of ReChem and 270 times the average found within 3km of ReChem.These comparisons amused me, since they also implied that ReChem’s own survey had found the soil near its focal point for PCBs to be less contaminated than typical Welsh soil. In my report I also took issue with the way that ReChem’s “Chemosphere” paper had been used by ReChem’s Dr. Jones, to counter the revelations made in the European Parliament by Llew Smith about the Sanger leaks. In the Chemosphere paper I saw that ReChem did not, there, rely on comparisons with the Californian Guidelines for surface contamination, but preferred to introduce a theoretical derivation of likely human intake of the dioxin 2,3,7,8 TCDD, from inhaling the air in the vicinity of surfaces with known levels of contamination. The Company’s conclusion was that the daily intake of 2,3,7,8 TCDD from dust in the air, would be acceptable. The highest level of contamination in the leaked memos data was thousands of times greater than the Californian Guidelines, yet ReChem’s calculations miraculously produced an intake figure 200 times lower than the acceptable daily intake. Following Llew Smith’s European announcement, ReChem’s Dr. Jones had given the impression that the Chemosphere paper contained an alternative interpretation of the leaked memos results. That wasn’t how I interpreted the publication’s paper. That paper had been relied upon by ReChem to explain the facts behind the leaked memos but it certainly didn’t fit the facts that we had. I applied Rechem’s own conversion formula to derive theoretical human intake from surface contamination and found that the average 2,3,7,8 TCDD contamination on the leaked memos surfaces yielded an intake 1500 times greater than ReChem’s Chemosphere claim. Even then, I worked out that ReChem’s formula massaged the figures by including what I felt was an inappropriate estimate for the typical amount of dust in the air. There was another hidden contradiction between what we knew and the information produced by Dr. Jones in his explanation of the Sanger memos. The anomaly, not found by me, was brilliantly discovered by our Newcastle librarian.
As if to rebel against his severely impaired eyesight, John Urquhart excelled in spotting obscure inferences in data. He noticed that for Peter Jones’ figures to be synonymous with the data we had in our possession, and for ReChem’s chief scientist to begin his calculations with a mean 2,3,7,8 TCDD concentration as low as 325 nanograms per kilogram, he would have needed massive amounts of dust on the sample wipes - in one case nearly half a kilogram of dust would be needed on a wipe the size of a small handkerchief. So, for Dr. Jones’ television answers to stand up against Llew Smith’s allegations, there would have needed to be both chemically clean air and an impossible settlement of dust at the same time. The final conclusion of the Chemosphere report that Dr. Jones appeared to be substituting for the full story of Sanger’s figures, read:
The only possible conclusion which can be drawn from such data is that sites around ReChem are indistinguishable form background levels and that the site has in no way contributed towards environmental contamination in the Pontypool Area.
Such calculations had quantified the discrepancies in ReChem’s view of the situation but for a long time the actual contamination figures remained hidden behind the leaked memos. ReChem didn’t know that we knew the results from the initial February sample from the Portakabin, and from the ten further samples taken in April, and the company continued to obscure the figures behind the leaked memos by aligning the fuss to a report that we could see related to different data. I was sitting on the mass of figures in July 1992, when Llew Smith got his opportunity to put some of those numerical matters before the British Parliament. The MEP who had also become an MP had a university degree in Economics and he was the first to accept that his command of chemistry wasn’t good. That didn’t prevent him getting to grips with the numbers and from seeing through the spin given to them by Rechem in the Sanger affair. Driven by a feeling that he was deceived by Rechem’s display following his 1988 Brussels revelations, he worked tirelessly to get the truth out of the company. He got to grips with the chemical terminology, the microscopic measurements and, most of all, the flaws in ReChem’s logic. More than two years after he first revealed the leaked memos in the European Parliament and then saw ReChem’s response on TV, he published his own account entitled: “SUMMARY OF THE ATEMPTS TO OBTAIN THE PROMISED TEST RESULTS FROM RECHEM”. It read:
To appreciate the full extent to which I believe ReChem misled the public, one needs to refer to the interview (13th September 1988) between their representative Dr. Peter Jones and journalist Max Perkins of HTV, based on the internal memoranda which we had brought to the attention of the European Parliament.
Max Perkins posed the following questions about whether “. . . . there was a high level of contamination at the Pontypool plant” and did he “have an answer at this stage.”
Dr. Jones replied: “Yes I do – faulty arithmetic.”
Max Perkins then posed a further question “Are you going to actually open your books to Mr. Smith . . . . and to anybody who asks?”
He replied: “Certainly, this data’s been published”, whilst previously he had stated “I guess in Chemosphere”.
In the South Wales Argus of September 13th 1988, ReChem’s defence was that “fundamental mistakes were made in that particular analysis and a second set of tests cleared the plant.”
Later, ReChem accused me of being “sensationalist” and described what I said as being “fundamentally untrue”. In fact, all I did was to repeat the remarks made by their own scientists, in the memos I have referred to.
I want now to comment on the memos and those early responses of Dr. Jones.
Firstly, on BBC TV on 15th September 1988, ReChem was forced to admit that it was not a miscalculation but, instead the results did show “a high level of contamination had been found in a sample at the plant”
Secondly, a further set of tests were conducted on 3rd April 1987. Their significance can be appreciated by comparing them with the Californian Guidelines, which we now know ReChem have used. Definition of the latter can be found in Chemosphere, 1986, No. 15 – Stephens. The decision to use the Californian Guidelines was not our decision, but that of the ReChem scientists. They cannot therefore accuse us of bias.
Dr. Jones’ statement, that a reported high level of contamination arose simply from an “arithmetical error”’ has already been discredited.
In reporting that fact, the headline in the South Wales Argus read: CLOSURE PLEA AS RE-CHEM ‘CONFESS’
Thirdly, the managing director, M C Lee attempted to cast doubt on those guidelines, by saying that, “We have never been able to find recommendations made in other parts of the U.S.A.” On the contrary, a letter which has now come into my possession, between Dr. Peter Jones of ReChem and the Port of Bristol Authority, shows that ReChem was not only aware of the Guidelines, but used them in analyzing samples they conducted for the Royal Portbury Docks.
I now have the second set of test results which show that the conclusions referred to in ReChem’s internal memorandum to the scientists, but not referred to in the interview with Max Perkins, was also misleading. Ye they still stated that on 23rd September 1987 that “the results of our monitoring checks showed the situation to be entirely safe”. This helps to explain ReChem’s refusal to provide us with the test results, even though Dr. Jones promised Max Perkins that they would “certainly” open the books to “anybody who asks”.
My correspondence with ReChem shows that they were not willing to provide me with this information and I concluded that it was because they had something to hide. Their response to my initial request for this information was that they had been advised by the EEC, that they should take the matter up “through the proper channels in the UK and not through the EEC”
I responded on 13th October 1988, expressing surprise at ReChem’s refusal, particularly as Dr. Jones had stated that this information had already been published. ReChem’s response on 17th October 1988 is interesting in that no longer do they mention the so-called EEC advice, but instead they furnished me with a “copy of the paper referred to by Dr Jones, which was published and presented orally at the Dioxin’88 Conference at Umea University, Sweden, in August 1988 . . . . it will be repeated in Chemosphere”.
The additional point to make is that it had not, as Dr. Jones stated, previously been published. In examining the above paper, I could not find the relevant test results. In our next piece of correspondence with ReChem on 19th October, we informed them of this point.
Their response on 20th October 1988 was as always interesting, in that they ignored my request to indicate where in the article the tests are referred to, but once again referred to the previous correspondence and said that “the matter is being dealt with through the proper channels”.
Surely, if the paper had contained the relevant test results, ReChem would have guided me to them, therefore ending the dialogue and disagreement between us.
I responded on 3rd January 3rd, with a copy of a letter I had received from the then Environment Commissioner Stanley Clinton Davies in December 1989, when he quite categorically stated that: “I can therefore confirm that the investigation to which you refer does not in any way prevent ReChem from releasing the information you requested. . .”
ReChem’s response on 16th January 16th was once again to refuse the information, for the reason previously given, saying that the commissioner’s view was “irrelevant”.
This was a surprise as ReChem had quoted him extensively in their defence in previous correspondence with me. What is more, he went on to blame me for making ‘the matter official by raising it in the European Parliament before you sought explanation from the Company.’
Surely, if I had done as they stated, then I would have been informed that it was an arithmetical error.
What is also interesting is that neither Torfaen Borough Council (the Licencing Authority)