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Aluminium in drinking water - Camelford inquiry at last

currer

Senior Member
Messages
1,409
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9119528/Is-aluminium-really-a-silent-killer.html

Twenty-four years ago, one of the UK’s most notorious pollution disasters occurred. At a water treatment works on the edge of Bodmin Moor, 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate leaked into the water supply serving the nearby town of Camelford.

Years of bitter disputes followed, with people who had drunk the water complaining of health problems. There were government inquiries, accusations of a cover-up – and, in 2004, the death of Carole Cross. This 58-year-old Camelford resident died from a rare and aggressive form of Alzheimer’s, and her brain was found to contain unusually high levels of aluminium.

The inquest into the cause of Mrs Cross’s death, delayed twice in the past few years, is set to report this week. Among those who will be watching the outcome with interest is Professor Chris Exley, who was called in nearly eight years ago to examine Mrs Cross’s brain (it contained 23 micrograms of aluminium per gram of brain, compared to normal levels of 0‑2mcg).

But Prof Exley, a world-renowned expert on aluminium, hopes the inquest will do more than finally establish the truth about why Mrs Cross died (he is convinced that aluminium from the drinking water played a role in her mental deterioration). He also hopes it will highlight how little we know about the implications for our health of the most prolific metal on the planet.

Aluminium, he argues, is now added to or used in almost everything we eat, drink, inject or absorb.
 
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13,774
Weren't the results something like: 'It was probably the aluminium that done it, but lets not worry about that now. No-one wants inconvenient accountability at this point, do they?'
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
Or have it pointed out that is was "sir" simon who decided officially it was all just mass hysteria at the time.
 
Messages
13,774
Or have it pointed out that is was "sir" simon who decided officially it was all just mass hysteria at the time.

He didn't actually say that (that I've seen of his public statements)... he's careful with his words. He did write a paper which was cited by others as evidence that camelford was mass hysteria.
 

peggy-sue

Senior Member
Messages
2,623
Location
Scotland
Aaargh - me and linguistic/mental short-cuts, getting it wrong again. Thanks for correcting me, Esther.
So, he sort of said it, it still got taken as being the official cause, but he won't get any come-back for having been wrong.

I do get caught out, every time, with wordsmiths and philosophers and lawyers; all sorts of authorities - banks, finance - who use words to imply one thing, while actually saying another. :alien:
 

prioris

Senior Member
Messages
622
baking powder is number one source of getting aluminum. i make sure i use the non aluminum kind.
 

MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
New article here
Camelford water poisoning: Unreserved government apology

I lived near enough to Camelford at the time to be prompted to check whether my tapwater came from that source, and to my relief it didn't.

The MP and former MP referred to are/were my own.

It was only in the past year or so that I became aware of the Wessely connection.
 

MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
You mean this one?

Just had a quick skim-read to find what Wessely and colleague's conclusion actually was. Here it is:

We suggest that the most likely explanation of the Camelford findings is that the perception of normal and benign somatic symptoms (physical or mental) by both subjects and health professionals was heightened and subsequently attributed to an external, physical cause, such as poisoning [29].

AFAIK he has always avoided using the 'h' word, which has been easily achieved by finding alternative expressions that mean the same thing, as helpfully listed by this weird site, for example:

Conversion Disorder
Dissociative Disorder
Non-Organic
Psychogenic
Psychosomatic
Somatisation
Hysteria

(thus essentially admitting that they are simply new terms for what used to be called hysteria)

aided by additional terms from the psychoquacks' lexicon such as 'MUS' and 'MUPS' (does the latter mean that we are muppets? :lol:)

That weird site promotes Freudian BS and twaddle like

Most experts believe that these symptoms exist at the interface between the brain and mind

REALLY? o_O