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Alison Gaffney and her partner were given heartbreaking news in 2018 when their 17-month-old Fraser was diagnosed with a rare type of leukaemia.

Two years of intensive medical care ensued, comprising cancer medications, radiotherapy, and biological therapies before a cellular therapy. Their son, then aged three, made a extraordinary turnaround from the operation, with doctors confirming the disease in regression.

During this period that Alison, 36, began looking for causes. She could not stop thinking about remarks made by healthcare workers at the time of her child's illness. “We're tormented wondering how Fraser got his illness,” a specialist had told her.

“It keeps us up at night wondering how our son got his illness,” a doctor had told her.

Historical Context

The improper handling of vast quantities of contaminated waste after the shutdown of Europe’s largest steelworks in this community in 1979 had “always been a known thing,” said the mother. A court ruling linked the council’s negligent clean-up of the site to a string of congenital abnormalities in town residents during the twentieth century.

Gradually, the concerned mother started to link the circumstances to her own. “[Fraser’s cancer] is not hereditary,” she said. “So what are the reasons? … It must be down to the area. So many children [with] the disease.

“Every resident knows someone who’s got a youngster [with] cancer. That’s not normal.”

Grassroots Movement

The parents started to contact additional households in their community with parallel situations – featuring some of Gaffney’s former classmates at Brooke Weston Academy – and the group began compiling detailed records on those affected. They now spearhead a initiative advocating for about 130 families with cases of pediatric illness dating back to 1988.

The collective has been calling on the local authority to examine any connections between instances of youth disease in the town and the shutdown of the industrial site. At the end of this month, public health officials are set to publish their evaluation of whether the area has had a unusually high rate of instances of childhood cancer for its residents of 70,000.

“What we seek is to work to secure subsequent residents so they won't experience the suffering that we've experienced,” said Alison.

Legal Precedents

The judgment in the 2009 civil claim accepted that, between 1983 and 1997, vast quantities of contaminated materials from the steel plant were relocated “regularly” from the southern part of town to a specific location in the north – with “large quantities” of hazardous materials moved and deposited on public roads and “considerable amounts” of particulate matter produced by the reclamation.

Nevertheless, it also cited documents from the Environment Agency in 1997 that found accumulations of contaminated material that had been abandoned at the site were later taken away in “significant amounts”.

Additional Issues

The campaign leader believes waste was not only dumped at the primary location but in additional areas of the community. In recent developments, she welcomed a “major step forward” after North Northamptonshire council said it would test land that could be contaminated and research where toxic waste was dumped.

Gaffney said council staff acknowledged in the conference that they were unaware where the sites of contaminated waste could be. “They said: ‘We're uncertain where these locations are. Documentation is missing, there's no data available.’”

Local Backing

The official statement was also supported by another parent, a pastoral lead at a local school, whose nine-year-old daughter, the child, was found to have blood cancer in June this year.

“I needed to cut my young child's hair because her hair was shedding from the medications she had to take to destroy her disease. So actually it’s in our interest, it’s in the child's wellbeing [for the council] to share that information,” she said.

“Numerous people in the town that have been diagnosed with pediatric illness and I just feel it’s impossible to overlook – it needs looking at. This is unusual.”

Family Experiences

A community member, aged thirty-one, who is employed in business and now resides elsewhere, said families merited “absolute honesty and transparency” from the government.

Lyons’s young sibling, Eve, passed away on 24 June 2017 after being confirmed to have a rare bone cancer at the young age. Her sister, who raised awareness for cancer charities, was “exceptionally lovable, funniest and caring” people, Lyons said.

Her mother recollects the consequence of the shutdown of the industrial facility on the area, she explained. “She mentioned you could not position your hand in ahead of you because [of] the particulate matter.”

“This has been going on since around about early childhood. It’s an excessive amount of time and it is irresponsibility toward the local residents.”

Historical Connections

Lyons’s cousin, Maggie Mahon, was one of several households involved in the 2009 claim against the former government after her infant was diagnosed with clubfoot. Her partner, the man, was one of the truck operators participating in handling substances from the industrial site. Their situation was portrayed in a recent series, and demonstrated the woman cleaning the particles from her partner's pants.

The campaign leader said the organization has been reached out to by informants who were involved in the placement of materials in the area.