TOXIC SHOCK - 21/08/01
REAL MAGAZINE

THREE BOYS, DANIEL SHATFORD, JORDAN SCOTT AND CONNOR MCINTYRE WERE ALL BORN WITH A RARE DEFORMITY OF THE HAND. THEIR FAMILIES ALL LIVE AROUND CORBY, CLOSE TO LAND WHERE LETHAL CHEMICALS WERE ILLEGALLY DUMPED. THERE ARE FIVE OTHER CHILDREN IN THE AREA WITH BIRTH DEFECT. SO WHY DOES THE LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY INSIST IT IS JUST A COINCIDENCE?

Daniel Shatford is struggling to open the top of a bottle of orange juice. He is concentrating hard, his expression intent. He’s four now and should be able to do it with relative ease.

His mother Joy, 27, watches him. She doesn’t offer to help and he doesn’t ask. Daniel is determined. Finally, he prises open the bottle and carefully pours the juice into his cup. Joy smiles proudly.

On his left hand there are only two very short fingers and a small, oddly shaped thumb. But Daniel was born without any fingers on that hand at all – and has undergone hours of reconstructive surgery. Bone was taken from the third toe of his left foot to create a thumb, and the second toe from each foot was removed to create fingers.

The little boy was Joy and Darren Shatford’s first baby. Joy had a perfectly normal pregnancy – nothing unusual showed up on any scans.

‘After my son was born, I lifted his blanket,’ she says. ‘I was desperate to feel his tiny fist curly round my finger. That’s when I noticed his left hand – he didn’t have any fingers. Instead, there were just tiny bobbles of skin.’

No one at Kettering General Hospital could explain why Joy’s son had been born like that. Instead Joy’s son had been born like that. Instead Joy, a PA, blamed herself, assuming she must have done something wrong during her pregnancy.

The shock made it difficult for her to bond with Daniel at first. ‘I had him early in the morning, but I didn’t phone anyone for hours, not even my mother. What could I say? It’s a boy, but… When he wouldn’t breast-feed, I was secretly relieved. It meant I didn’t have to hold him. Instead, whenever I could, I handed him to Darren.’

Days after the birth, Joy and Darren consulted a plastic surgeon. He explained that Daniel’s condition is known as symbrachydactyly, which, literally translated, means ‘stuck, short finer’. It is rare, affecting only one in 20,000 British children a year.

It is thought that the condition is caused when some of the womb proteins coagulate into cord-like structures and wrap around part of the embryo. If they wind around the fingers, they can cut off the blood supply, impairing development. The fingers then fail to grow, and leave, instead, tiny sacks of skin.

At 14 months of age, Daniel under went his first operation at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds , where the leading plastic surgeon, Simon Kay, specialises in hand reconstruction.

In the cot opposite was another boy, 18 month old Connor McInytre. He was having the same operation as Daniel, performed on his left hand. And there was a further similarity – he lived in Corby , Northants, just seven miles from the Shatfords’ home in Rothwell.

‘It was extraordinary,’ says Joy. ‘And then I began to think it could be more than a coincidence.’

Connor’s mother Susan, 32, thought so too. She had already come across another case of a local boy born with a hand deformity when she was pregnant with Connor.

His name was Curtis Thorpe and he had no fingers on his right hand. His mother Mandy was from Corby . Curtis was born in March 1996, Connor in August, and Daniel in December – all at Kettering General Hospital .

The mothers pooled details of their pregnancies and what might have gone wrong, but couldn’t find anything significant – except where they lived.

Joy Shatford’s second child, Jamie, born four months after Daniel’s first operation, was completely normal. Nothing was different during this pregnancy, except that her husband Darren had stopped working in Corby before Jamie was conceived. Previously, as they only had one car, Joy had driven Darren into Corby and back every day.

Meanwhile, Susan McIntyre had come across another local boy with a hand deformity. Jordan Scott, two years older than Connor and Daniel, had been born with the fingers on his right hand joined together. His forearm was underdeveloped as well.

‘Suddenly, it was frightening,’ says Susan. ‘We wondered if there was a connection with Corby . Was it something we’d eaten? Somewhere we’d been? We didn’t know where to start looking.’

Then, in April 1999, when Connor almost three, Susan learned about a possible link between birth defects and toxic waste from a network of landfill sites around Corby.

The sites were formerly associated with a British Steel plant. When the plant closed in the 1980s, Corby Borough Council took over the sites for further development and assumed responsibility for cleaning up the land. They received both government and European Union grants to do so.

Bu illegal fly-tipping of chemical waste began the 300-acre Denne Quarry, which had supplied ironstone to the steelworks.

This pollution was particularly dangerous, as the land was used by local children. ‘I was shocked,’ Susan says. ‘When I was a child, these sites were my playground. My friends and I spent all our time there. And I was angry. Why had no one warned us? Why had there been no mention of the possible risks?’

In 1996 – the year Daniel, Curtis and Connor were born – the council began moving toxic material from Willowbrook Quarry to a specially built toxic-containment cell at Deene Quarry, half a mile away. Waste from Soothills – a site full of ash from blast furnaces from the steelworks – was also moved to Deene Quarry.

But, whether Corby Borough Council mismanaged the site is unclear – that year, a fire at the council offices in Northampton destroyed many relevant records detailing what the landfill sites contained.

However, in 1999, Channel 4 News obtained council documents which, they claimed, showed that levels of arsenic in the soil at Willowbrook were so high they could poison people working on the site.

The report, by local authority auditors, stated: ‘The measured levels of arsenic may well prove toxic.’ It also revealed levels of zinc, boron and nickel in excess of Department of the Environment guidelines, and found that there was no effective management of the site and no accurate records of what it contained. Some residents remember pools of mud which smelled like carbolic acid.

Susan and Joy felt they were getting closer to the possible answer – had their unborn babies been poisoned by the toxic chemicals at the sites close to where they lived?

Shortly after, Desmond Collins, senior partner of Collins Solicitors in Watford , invited families whose children had birth defects to meet him in Corby . Ten families attended the meeting.

Collins felt that they had a case against Corby Borough Council, as it was responsible for monitoring the sites. Families such as the Shatfords and the McIntyres had gone about their lives, raising their children, unaware of what lay in these two landfill sites.

A 1998 report by the London School Hygiene and Tropical Medicine showed that mothers living within two miles of a hazardous-waste landfill site were one-third more likely to give birth to a child with a deformity.

Despite this, Northampton Health authority does not recognise there is a cluster of cases. Its report says the figures are ‘not significantly higher than what would be expected when compared with the rates for the rest of England and Wales .’

But this report looks at a 10-year period (1989-1998). It does not comment on the very marked increase between 1994 and 1997. In 19974, there were four cases within the Kettering Health Authority – including Jordan Scott. Between 1996 and 1997, there were five cases, four of which came from Corby . These include Daniel, Curtis and Connor. John Scott (no relation to Jordan ), senior research associate at the University of Newcastle , believes the findings are more than a coincidence. He has spent years investigating the results of toxic pollution and, as a former consultant paediatrician, has operated on many child with limb deformities.

“The incidence of children born with limb deformities in Corby is 10 times higher than expected for a town of 60,000 inhabitants,’ he explains.

‘The fact that there was a group of children born with limb deformities living near a landfill site which has a lot of toxic materials is significant. It requires a great deal of work to investigate this thoroughly: what was in the landfill site? Are vegetables from fields near the site toxic? Are we drinking milk from cows that graze on contaminated grass? Is ground water spreading toxins?

‘It is always conclusively that the landfill sites are to blame, but it is the council’s responsibility to look into this for these people.’

The families remain convinced that toxic waste contamination was to blame for the birth defects – it is, for them, the only explanation that makes sense.

‘We have to show in court that, on the balance of probability, there is a link between these two factors,’ Desmond Collins says.

‘I want somebody to stand up and admit this,’ says Susan McIntyre. “What worries me most of all is, where will this stop? These chemicals could be in our soil and in our water – they could be anywhere. I will eventually move away from Corby . I don’t want my sons to have their children here.

‘Every day I watch Connor struggle. He can’t hold things properly – like toys or the handlebars of his bike. I buy him trousers with elasticated waists and tops without buttons, so he doesn’t need to depend on me to help him dress.’

Collins Solicitors are now acting for eight Corby children with birth defects. And they have had several more inquiries.

Desmond Collins believes they have ‘conclusive evidence of a link between toxic waste and birth defects’. His firm has come to the conclusion that Corby Borough Council is liable in law.

They are claiming the damages for the way the council managed the sites, which could result in a compensation payout for the children involved.

The council have denied liability and have passed the papers to their solicitors. They have also informed Collins that they are not insured for this claim.

Mothers like Joy and Susan can take some comfort that their children are not alone in this. But, as Joy says, nothing can change the fact that Daniel will have to live with his deformity for the rest of his life.

When Daniel was three, he had further surgery. This time, in a delicate nine-hour operation, surgeons removed the second toe from each foot to make fingers. His hand was in a cast for six weeks, then in a splint for a further two weeks.

‘When they removed the bandages his hand was very swollen,’ says Joy. ‘I was worried that we’d made a mistake. If the fingers hadn’t worked, he would have gone through all that for nothing.

‘Fortunately, even though two of his toes were removed, he walks normally. In the operation, they cut a triangle shape where his toes were removed, so there is no gap. You wouldn’t know the toes were missing unless you counted.

‘At the moment, he doesn’t see his “special hand” as a problem. It’s all he’s ever known. But Daniel is always going to be different, and I worry that he’ll grow up to be self-conscious and withdrawn.

‘A few months ago, I took him to a school party. All the children formed a circle to play ring-a-ring o’roses, but the little girl on Daniel’s left wouldn’t hold his hand. Luckily, the teacher stepped in and moved everyone around. But it’s at time like that I feel so angry.

“This is not just about compensation – I am fighting for the truth, so that this never happens again. We are prepared for a hard legal battle, but it will be easy compared to the last four years.

‘We still live only seven miles from Corby , and I often have to go there. When I’m in the car, I look out as those landfill sites and shudder – who knows what lies beneath? But, for Daniel’s sake, I’m determined to find out.’

Corby Borough Council says. “We are unable to make a comment at this time as we feel it would be inappropriate to do so until the investigation into the matter has been completed.’