🔗 Share this article

A local mother and Fraser's father received devastating diagnosis in 2018 when their young son their child was confirmed to have a rare type of blood cancer.

Two years of intensive medical care ensued, including drug treatments, radiation therapy, and immune system treatments before a cellular therapy. The young boy, by age three, made a “miraculous recovery” from the procedure, with doctors confirming the cancer in recovery.

During this period that the mother, in her mid-thirties, began investigating explanations. She could not stop thinking about observations made by hospital staff at the time of her Fraser's condition. “We're tormented wondering how our son got his disease,” a doctor had shared with her.

“It keeps us up at night wondering how our son got his disease,” a specialist had shared with her.

Past Events

The botched disposal of millions of tonnes of contaminated waste after the closure of the town's primary employer in this community in 1979 had “long been recognized,” said the mother. A 2009 civil case linked the improper remediation efforts of the site to a string of congenital abnormalities in community youth during the twentieth century.

Increasingly, Gaffney started to associate the circumstances to her own. “[His illness] is not genetic,” she stated. “What could cause this? … It’s got to be down to the town. All these kids [with] cancer.

“Everybody in this town is acquainted with a person who’s got a minor [with] the disease. That's unusual.”

Grassroots Movement

Alison and Andy started to contact additional households in Corby with similar stories – including some of the mother's past schoolmates at a local school – and the group began compiling comprehensive documentation on those involved. They now spearhead a initiative supporting about 130 families with cases of pediatric illness dating back to 1988.

The collective has been pressuring the local authority to examine any relationships between occurrences of childhood cancer in the town and the decommissioning of the plant. At the end of this month, medical experts are preparing to share their study of whether the area has had a disproportionate number of occurrences of youth disease for its population of 70,000.

“What we seek is to work to secure subsequent residents so they do not have to endure the pain that we've endured,” said Alison.

Legal Precedents

The ruling in the legal case recognized that, between the 1980s and 1990s, vast quantities of toxic substances from the manufacturing site were moved “regularly” from the south of Corby to a specific location in the northern section – with “significant amounts” of toxic waste moved and dumped on community streets and “large volumes” of airborne particles produced by the remediation.

However, it also mentioned reports from the environmental authorities in 1997 that discovered accumulations of hazardous waste that had been deposited at the site were later extracted in “large quantities”.

Additional Issues

Gaffney believes contaminated materials was not only dumped at the primary location but in additional areas of the community. In recent developments, she welcomed a “important advancement” after North Northamptonshire council said it would examine land that could be contaminated and investigate where hazardous materials was dumped.

The mother said government representatives confirmed in the meeting that they lacked information where the locations of toxic materials could be. “They said: ‘We lack information where these locations are. Documentation is missing, there's no data available.’”

Public Endorsement

The government declaration was also embraced by another parent, a educational worker at a local school, whose nine-year-old daughter, her daughter, was found to have leukaemia in the summer.

“I needed to cut my young child's scalp because her tresses was coming out from the treatments she had to administer to kill her disease. So actually it’s in the community's concern, it’s in the child's wellbeing [for the council] to reveal that information,” she explained.

“There are so many residents in the town that have been confirmed to have childhood cancer and I just feel it’s cannot be dismissed – it needs looking at. This can’t be normal.”

Personal Stories

Meg Lyons, 31, who works in sales and now lives in London, said families earned “absolute honesty and openness” from the government.

Her 11-year-old sister, Eve, passed away on in recent years after being found to have a rare bone cancer at the young age. The girl, who raised awareness for health organizations, was “exceptionally adorable, entertaining and compassionate” people, Lyons stated.

Her family member remembers the impact of the cessation of the manufacturing site on the town, Lyons said. “She mentioned you couldn’t put your fingers in ahead of you because [of] the particulate matter.”

“This has been going on since I was approximately about early childhood. It's too long and it is carelessness toward the community members.”

Historical Connections

Lyons’s cousin, a local resident, was part of multiple households involved in the court proceeding against the then Corby council after her baby was diagnosed with clubfoot. Her husband, her partner, was a member of the vehicle operators involved in handling substances from the industrial site. Their experience was shown in a recent series, and illustrated Maggie beating the particles from her husband’s jeans.

Gaffney said the collective has been reached out to by whistleblowers who were responsible for the placement of waste in the town.