Here's the text of the e-mail I sent to Mark Sitton, the Regional Director for Environment Agency (Midlands) on 29 March 2011:

Dear Mr Sitton,

I've included you on the cc-list of several e-mails in the last month or so regarding incinerators and the failure of
the Health Protection Agency to examine relevant data around incinerators (see attached Surrey Mirror article) despite their promise to do so in the
Western Daily Press article "Chemical danger testing" (6 August 2003) - pasted at end of e-mail.

You are also aware that the Health Protection Agency don't want anyone to examine data around incinerators
(Hansard, 30 November 2009: Column 539W) despite research published in 2004 and 2007 which found elevated
infant death rates around incinerators in Japan and Italy:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmhansrd/cm091130/text/91130w0038.htm



http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jea/14/3/83/_pdf



http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Fulltext/2007/09001/Infant_Mortality_in_27_Italian_Municipalities_With.412.aspx#



You've not yet made any comment to me about the clustering of high infant death wards around Tyseley incinerator:





http://www.ukhr.org/incineration/tyseley.pdf



but the proposed Sinfin incinerator will make the infant death rates in nearby wards, which are already very high, even higher.



After reading a blog comment on Derby Evening Telegraph website, I've looked at the infant mortality data for Derby

and seen that the average rate for the Council in 2009 is 8.4 per 1,000 live births, which is the highest for the seven years

2003 to 2009 for which I've aggregated the data at electoral ward level.



When I last mapped the infant death rates in London's 625 electoral wards, I coloured red the wards with rates of 6.5 per 1,000 & above

as "high". Wards where the rate was less than 2.0 per 1,000 live births were coloured green. If I coloured a Derby ward map in same way,

Sinfin ward would be in the "high" group for 2003-2009 aggregated data and the other five wards with high infant death rates form

a single group (with Sinfin) which suggests that there's already some significant source of pollution in the Derby area which needs to be identified and stopped.



The ward with infant death rate of 0.9 per 1,000 had 1107 live births in the above 7-year period, so you'll realise at once that a single infant death was recorded by ONS.

The largest number of live births I've found so far in an electoral ward where ONS recorded zero infant deaths over successive years was in an Ealing ward (London)

where 1533 live births were recorded. What was significant about the Ealing ward was that it was free from emissions from the ten incinerators that impact on

some, but not all of London.



These are the rates of infant deaths in the Derby wards in descending order of magnitude - aggregated for the 7-year period 2003-2009

during which ONS recorded a total of 135 infant deaths and 22723 live births.





9.9
8.5
7.8
7.6
6.6
6.5
5.5
5.4
5.2
5.1
4.8
4.3
4.3
4
3.2
3.1
0.9

Yours sincerely,

Michael Ryan

Western Daily Press: Chemical danger testing
Western Daily Press (Bristol, England) - Wednesday, August 6, 2003
Readability: >12 grade level (Lexile: 1310L)
THE potential dangers of chemicals and poisons, such as those from landfill sites and incinerators, are to come under intense scrutiny, the Health Protection Agency ( HPA ) announced yesterday.

Working with the NHS, the HPA will investigate suspicious clusters of disease which could be linked to chemical exposure.

The pledge was made as the fledgling agency, which began work in April, launched its five-year plan setting out its aims and objectives across a raft of health protection concerns.

The plan pointed out that an estimated 600 new chemicals entered the marketplace each month, on top of the 11million already known and 70,000 in regular use.

Various studies have claimed that exposure to chemicals can have serious effects on health, including the risk of birth defects and certain chronic diseases.

The HPA plan not only highlighted public concern about chemical -related accidents, but also the possible ill health consequences of long-term exposure to chemicals , such as those emitted from landfills, incinerators and industrial sites.

Pat Troop, the HPA 's chief executive, said it was crucial to study the long-term effects of chemical exposure. "We are not saying there is a problem. We are saying we are looking carefully to see if there is a problem or there isn't a problem. The public is concerned about many of these issues."