ABSTRACT
Wednesday 26 June 1991 dawned with little to offer for sports fans in Britain. Wimbledon would be washed out again and it didn't look good for the third test-match between England and the West Indies. However, it would be a day to remember in South Wales, and it began with a small news story in the Argus: Richard Biffa and Malcolm Lee had resigned from ReChem and had given up their executive positions on the board of Shanks and McEwan. l The national newspapers did not record the event but three papers, the Financial Times, the Guardian and the Scofs1?!an, noted that Oxford University Press had published the British Medical Association's report on hazardous waste and human health. The Guardian reported that the BMA had called for a ban on toxic waste imports. The Financial Times and the Scotsman reported that the BMA wanted a national waste strategy. There was little evidence that hazardous waste had caused public health problems in Britain, the chairman of the BMA's science and education board had told a press conference, but he added: "We cannot reassure the public there is no risk from these substances."2 Tara Lamont, who wrote the report, said she was disappointed with the media coverage.3 The subject, it seemed, wasn't high on the media's schedules. Though how the majority of the national media managed to miss the poisoned milk story in Derbyshire will probably remain a mystery in itself. In the House of the Commons on 26 June, Agriculture Minister John Gummer replied to a parliamentary question from West Lancashire MP Kenneth Hind.4 The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) had announced its findings from a survey of dioxin levels in milk. Gummer explained:
Sophisticated techniques which have been developed recently in the Department's food science laboratory at Norwich have for the last year made it possible to detect dioxins at minute levels. As milk tends to
Not
show up airborne contaminants, it is a particularly useful and sensitive product to test in a programme designed to protect the public. Dioxins are of course widespread in the environment, and as could be expected, traces of them have been found in all the samples tested.s
Gummer added that the scientific and medical experts in his department and in the Department of Health had calculated a maximum tolerable concentration of 0.7 nanogrammes per kilogramme of milk, if the tolerable daily intake (TOI) for dioxin of 0.01 nanogrammes per kilogramme body weight per day, recommended by the EC in 1990, is not to be exceeded. "Their advice," said Gummer on instruction from his department:
is that action should be taken to prevent the direct consumption of milk if it contains a higher concentration of dioxins.
