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Sonae and the high incidences of cancer in Kirkby.

spitthedog | 23.04.2008 19:20

Time to get rid of this filthy polluting factory owned by criminals.

The article below though a local story needs national coverage as you will see from the comments to it.In regards to expert assistance.
Sonae and the high incidences of cancer in Kirkby.

Fri 18 Apr 2008
Posted by admin under: Sonae
Time to get rid of this filthy polluting factory owned by criminals.

The past week has been a bad one as far as the pollution from Sonae is concerned. The smell of that filthy factory once again spread itself over Kirkby, with Northwood as usual faring the worse due to the close proximity.

The world could actually get a glimpse of Sonae as the Grand National event took place. As the horses ran around the track, the camera caught the chimney with its cloud of God knows what pouring from it 24/7, apart from yearly maintenance, accidents and perhaps another explosion. The actual smell from Sonae can reach Aintree if the winds prevail.



Sonae wood dust 2002 and 2008

Since 2002, we have reported on the Sonae situation. For the most part, the only other websites reporting on environmental pollution are environmental websites, but we’re seeing a quickening of pace with the number of campaigning websites going up.

Environmental issues are something Knowsley Council has a strange relationship with. At one moment, there they are, the ‘green’ council – knowingly advising local kids to ‘eat more healthily’, telling parents how to set a ‘healthy lifestyle example’ – and then there they are, shaking hands with Sonae, roping in Milly Molly Mandleson the prince of Darkness to slip Sonae a £1.95 million DTI grant.

The decision to bring Sonae here was reckless and a short-sighted view from a council which never did see any value in Kirkby. Knowsley Council sold off hundreds of plots of land, great and small, some for prices which would make your jaw drop.

The deals by the council to bring jobs to Kirkby, have been dismal – with most firms coming here on the strength of EU grants, DTI grants and a myriad of grants always there for some rich business concern to grab – when we’d see more jobs created just dishing the cash out, and seeing a few people maybe establish successful businesses.

The jobs bought by Sonae came at a price which has seen Kirkby polluted since 2001, with local schools and old peoples homes bearing the brunt of that filthy polluting plant. Knowsley council cannot even say how many jobs Sonae bought to Kirkby people.



Sonae dust April 2008

One of the biggest concerns about Sonae comes with the growing number of young people in the Northwood area and Kirkby in general who have cancer. Each week in the churches, it seems more young people are in the ‘prayers for the Parish sick’. We all know of the heart breaking tales of the young kids in Kirkby who have fell victim to or who are struggling with cancer.

For years, there have been concerns raised about this issue but since the 80s the council has been loath to touch anything which might clash with their scheming, dealing, fiddling and diddling.

Perhaps with new councillors, not indebted to the devious Keight and Round and the cabal of political delinquents in Huyton, Kirkby might find the truth out. To even think that our political masters and those in the highest remits of public office could cover up such a thing, really does make you think about China and their [sometimes] harsh penalties for corrupt local officials.

More than a few UK councillors would be shot in China. The former and now dead leader of Kirkby council, Dave Tempest, certainly would have been grimly contemplating the afterlife as he was led out to some field, with officials gathered and a smartly dressed solider putting his lights out.

As it happens, on the On 27 Feb 2007, George Howarth MP sponsored a debate in the House of Commons on the unusually high incidence of cancer in Kirkby. During the debate, he stated…

“Kirkby has a long and unhappy history of health problems, most particularly of cancer. A debate is currently under way locally about the causes of the high rates of certain kinds of cancer. I have recently been responsible, along with others, for the establishment of a monitoring group to consider what action is being taken and to monitor the research that is under way. However, there is a widespread belief in Kirkby that industrial pollution is at least part of the problem, and the name most often mentioned is, sad to say, Sonae.”

Sad to say George, it was your mates who bought Sonae here.

Even sadder is the fact that children in Kirkby are getting cancer at a rate which all seem to agree is higher than other areas. Sadder still is that were just debating it, and the local MP is only yet at the stage of pointing to ‘widespread beliefs’.

In other words, it’s only Kirkby, a working class town whose residents are the disposable working class on the outskirts of Liverpool. Even if the local children and the entire town might be in some cancer hotspot – the diggers are still busy building more homes so more people can be polluted by Sonae.

My first Sonae wood dust
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4 Responses to “Sonae and the high incidences of cancer in Kirkby.”

1. spitthedog Says: April 21st, 2008 at 9:33 am

Maybe it’s time for a class action.A long drawn out thing to do. You have to research your case well.Gathering and testing the evidence.Writing to experts in the particular field the evidence seems to support. And having them test it and agree to testify in court. It can be very costly in more ways than cash. But there are a lot of qualified people who will help for free if it is for a cause like this,like the legal work done by solicitors and researchers in cases like John Kamara.At the same time though the kids need to be educated towards employment in clean industry’s like computers,hardware and software.I’ve wrote a little piece about qualifying as a systems engineer in the computer help section.And I think a lot of kids out there will be surprised about just how easy it is to do.
2. PC Says: April 22nd, 2008 at 4:47 pm

In reply to Spitthedog. I agree wholeheartedly with your suggestions. A class action really is the only way forward but you need good solicitors not door steppers just interested in how much they can make from our suffering. We just need a few brave souls initially to come forward and the rest will follow! There is strength and safety in numbers! A good Investigative Journalist would be a good start too.

For what good it will do, I am willing to give my time and skills as a researcher voluntarily to any solicitor or Law Centre or Investigative Journalist who will at least look at the possibilities that Sonae is causing illness for residents and also for the wood workers who machine, saw and sand this toxic board that they produce. I already have masses of information and there is a clear link and PROVEN link with wood dust and cancer and many respiratory illnesses and other diseases. I have written and contacted many such experts in this particular field both in the UK and America and gained a good deal of support already.

The I.A.R.C. (International Agency for Research on Cancer) who designated ‘wood dust’ as carcinogenic did so because of British research into British wood workers suffering from nasal cancer caused by wood dust. Other diseases are strongly implicated too.

The wood dust piles that are seen outside the Sonae plant that blow freely over Kirkby, instead of being contained as they should be, polluting your town and poisoning your young and old alike is the same dust that is emitted when it’s machined by wood workers and is then taken home to poison their families. Sadly, the injustice goes way beyond the good folk of Kirkby.

Myself and my family live nowhere near the Sonae plant but are still victims of it’s pollution we believe and there are many, many more who may be too but do not realise it due to their employers not telling them the truth. I wonder how many woodworkers actually are made aware that ‘wood dust’, any wood dust, is carcinogenic? The wood composite boards, much despised MDF and chipboard, particleboard, OS board, and the like, are even more toxic, more poisonous due to the many carcinogenic chemicals that may also be added in it’s manufacture such as silica and formaldehyde. Would anyone continue to breath it in if they knew the truth? I think not.

WHY AREN’T THE UNIONS AT LEAST DOING SOMETHING TO PROTECT ITS WOOD WORKING MEMBERS? Come on all you mighty and influential Unions get a grip for the sake of all them and their families before many more die or become severely disabled, choking for every breath due to scarred lungs, unable to walk, unable to work, unable to provide for their families.

Do they really deserve to be thrown on the scrap heap because they can no longer work due to another’s negligence, because their bodies are so badly damaged by the wood dust and other chemicals? Forced to beg and battle to get the sickness and disability benefits that they are now sadly fully entitled to but very often aren’t allowed. Money that the Government were more than willing and were very quick to take out of their wages every month with a promise to give some of it back should their hour of need ever arise but then when that time sadly comes, when they do urgently need it, the Government are no where to be seen, instead found hiding in the back benches no doubt. All promises forgotten, lost in the mountains of legislation. Mention claiming their expenses and look out for the stampede! No hiding then.

That is what our esteemed Government do, our very own elected members, force the chronically sick and disabled to do just that. How dare they? Whilst they AND often their family members too literally get away with what is tantamount to theft by dishonestly claiming vast amounts of expenses they are not entitled to at the tax payers expense. Promises not forgotten then it seems. Married MP’s and Councillors are laughing all the way to the bank with often a double load of ill-gotten gains in their greedy clutches. How much of our tax-payers money is lost in this way as opposed to that from falsely claimed sickness and disability benefits? Yet they get away with it Scot free. Even if the culprits are reluctantly forced by their peers to resign they invariably are allowed back in via the back door when the dust settles only to reappear somewhere else in Government. Old boys/girls network looking after their own as always. No justice there either.

Whilst we pay for the wife of the Leader of the House to claim for taxi’s for shopping trips and first class travel for his family for example and don’t even insist on receipts or proof, sick and disabled people are denied the help they so desperately need, denied the medications that are vital to their health refused due to their cost and then left to live and die in abject poverty. Disparaged by our Government for being a burden to society, a financial drain. How dare they?

Why are these culprits, our most trusted members of society, our MP’s and local Councillors who are found to be guilty of this crime (for that is what it is, it’s a crime and they are criminals in every sense of the word) why are they not thrown into prison as those quite rightly are who falsely claim benefits? Why as a society do we tolerate that kind of behaviour from those who we honour with our vote, that we elect in a supposedly democratic system and entrust to run our country?

What is the difference between an MP or Councillor claiming expenses and a person claiming disability benefits? Well the truth is MP’s have ensured they are not accountable for much of what they claim whereas they ensured that the sick and disabled always are? Even when their own ‘indiscretions’ are brought out into the open we allow them to investigate themselves! Like they’re ever going to own up to it or at the very least ‘dob in their mates’. Where’s the justice in that?

Why should the ‘powers that be’ be above the very laws that they themselves make? Why should the likes of Kirkby residents and the wood workers be subject to something that our MP’s are not? After all MP’s and local Councillors are responsible for allowing companies such as Sonae to do what they do in the first place, not only to pollute and devastate our lives but to continue to allow them do so, encouraging them even by way of massive grants. Reward them for polluting your town and poisoning young and old alike. I’ll bet we don’t see Sonae for dust when the grants run out! We the tax-payers pay them to poison us! How do our duly elected members all sleep at night I wonder? Maybe the vast expenses they claim make it more bearable for them. After all with all that extra cash, our cash, they won’t have to live in these godforsaken polluted towns or have to work in employment where they and their families are continuously poisoned until they drop or die.

Some of the forgotten victims too are the wood workers, joiners, etc who daily breath in the toxic, ultra fine dust that their board gives off when it’s sawn and machined. A toxic, carcinogenic dust that is then taken home on clothes, hair and skin to invade homes, staying suspended invisibly in the air and then breathed in too by the rest of the family. Family members who get sick are very rarely considered when any environmental cause or pollution of any kind is suspected to be to blame. Also, because genetics often plays a big part in diseases it is often the case too that family members end up with a different illness than the key worker and the link may never be suspected let alone looked into.

Until that is perhaps you get the unique situation where two close family members like us who may provide that link, that key to proof that something more sinister is at play and who end up suffering from the very same rare incurable devastating illness which cannot be put down to coincidence or be put down to Kirkby’s previous industrial past. We’ve never lived in Kirkby. When the only real link between them is the wood dust and toxic chemicals from the wood composite boards made from the mountains of wood dust like the one at the Sonae plant. Mountains of a carcinogenic substance left to blow around a town and that’s not expected to make someone ill? Yeah right! We may be the proof that others have been looking for that definitely links certain devastating and often fatal diseases and illnesses to wood dust and more importantly the board produced by Sonae and other board producers like them.

The evidence is out there if only someone would only care to look as we have. One day someone will care enough to look and then Sonae’s days in Kirkby are numbered.

We are considering taking legal action for the suffering we have endured due to the negligence of others. I urge anyone who thinks that their illnesses may be caused by the wood dust and pollution from Sonae or any wood worker working with any wood composite board who suspects that their illness is work related to do the same. If everyone did that then you might have a better chance of getting Sonae out of your town and adequate, safer H & S practices within the wood working industries.

I also would urge any ex Sonae worker or indeed anyone who knows anything that might be helpful to come forward. Some of you must have consciences. Help these people now!

One day you will wake up and not be able to live with the knowledge you have but by then it will be too late for many, maybe even for you. Remember - you breathed in Sonae’s wood dust too!!
3. spitthedog Says: April 23rd, 2008 at 5:29 am

PC.
Your comment is the most eloquent and thought provoking I have ever read on this site. I am sure it will have the same effect on others who read it. Your offer to donate your time and research free supports what I have written. That their are good professional people out there who will give their time and hard work for free for the right cause.I feel certain that admin will promote this.One part I would like to look at first is the fact that wood dust is particle fibres.And the consideration of linking it to the evidence of the particle fibre asbestos. It maybe a quicker route to evidence.I am willing to donate my time in any way I can.And whatever funds I can afford.Number one priority on the list is lets get organised.If anyone else has suggestions please add them.
4. spitthedog Says: April 23rd, 2008 at 6:20 am

Here is Spekes air quality.I know there is a kerbside station on Lower lane but I can’t find it online.I have emailed bv-aurnsiteinfo.co.uk for the info re it.

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