'Too many have already died' on the estate where one person in every three has cancer

Buried toxic waste is blamed for the terrifying mortality rate in a Midlands neighbourhood, report Ros Wynne-Jones and Michael Paduano

Six Years ago, Joan Oram was diagnosed with womb cancer. Since then, her neighbour has died of cancer and so has the man who lives next door but one. Next door to him, a woman has died of breast and womb cancer, and two people opposite have also been diagnosed with cancer. On the Rocket Pool estate in Bradley, near Wolverhampton, there is a lot of cancer.

Mrs Oram, a 52-year-old former voluntary worker, became so worried that she conducted a survey of the health of her neighbourhood. She found that 52 people out of 156 in 88 households had been diagnosed with or had recently died of cancer - exactly one-third.

She is convinced that there is a cancer cluster in Bradley and that it is linked to a recreation area which backs on to her garden and those of her neighbours.

The area - where children play, horses graze and locals walk their dogs - was formerly a landfill site, in use in the days before regulations concerning the dumping of toxic chemicals. Tests on the site have found quantities of cadmium, methane, cyanide, arsenic, lead, chromium, phenol and toluene.

A mining report produced in 1991 for Wolverhampton council and leaked to the Independent on Sunday states that: "The fill material may be of a porous nature, allowing easy migration of gases. It may also have a high water table, allowing a possible movement of leachates and contiminants, some of which may be toxic."

Wolverhampton Health Authority says it has conducted many tests of the site, its soil, air and water, since then, but can find nothing wrong.

Although Mrs Oram has claimed that the council is not taking her seriously, Dr Alwyn Davies, the health authority's consultant in public health medicine, says this is unfair.

"Even though Mrs Oram's survey is amateur we are effectively treating the situation as if there is a cluster," he says. "We have conducted research into the number of cancer deaths in the area and can find nothing amiss; we have tested the site and the nearby Rocket Pool and can find nothing amiss. Even if there is a cluster it could be down to a number of other causes - but we are trying everything in our power to get to the bottom of it."

The health authority has now commissioned an epidemiologist from the Birmingham Institute of Public Health, Pat Saunders, to examine whether or not there is a cancer cluster in the area, and environmental health specialists are to test the site further for toxic contiminants. The results are expected in September.

"I just know there is something that is not right in Bradley," says Mrs Oram. "We have always made it clear that we will not rest until it is put right and whatever is causing the cancer is made safe for the next generation. Too many people have already died."

Her survey, she says, has revealed 23 cases of breast cancer, seven of bowel cancer, three of cervical cancer, five of lung cancer, four of throat cancer and one case of leukaemia. "Those were just in the houses I surveyed," she says. "I'm no scientist, and I never thought I'd know what toluene or leachates were, but I've had to learn it all."

Her survey also revealed a high incidence of unexplained skin rashes and eye irritations - both potential signs of exposure to landfill contaminants - and 15 residents with heart conditions.

Neighbour Irene Holmes, who says her street has lost at least 15 people to cancer since 1990, remembers the site - which drains towards the Rocket Pool from which the 1950s council estate takes its name - being filled.

"It used to be the locks of the canal," she says. "We watched them day after day bringing drums filled with all kinds of rubbish from the local factory. Nobody knew what was in them - it was an enormous hole in the ground just being filled with waste.

"I worry that it could be what killed my husband, my cousin's wife, my friends."

Alan Cook, a consultant geologist and geotechnical engineer who has spent 15 years testing contaminants in the Black Country (which takes its name from the blackening effect that chemical waste has had on its environment), supports the residents' claims.

"I'm particularly concerned that the area is unusually heavily contaminated with cadmium," he says. "In a public open space, that is very worrying. Cadmium is a close cousin of arsenic and in animals it has been found to be carcinogenic. High levels of toluene and phenol are known to cause skin-contact dermatitis - there has been a high incidence of that in the area."

A British government has never commissioned an in-depth survey into the thousands of landfill sites, but US studies show there is normally a slight increase in health risk for people living close to such sites. Legislation brought in after residents of Love Canal, New York State, discovered they were living on top of chemicals from an old waste dump site in 1978, has cost US industry billions of dollars.

The three local authorities concerned - Sandwell, Wolverhampton and Dudley - will meet tomorrow to decide what is to be done about Bradley's potential cancer cluster.