Wishaw Pact chemical warfare troops hose down Soviet-era blocks around the school
Four teachers at Buchanan High in Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, have developed the same rare cancer. Three work in the same corridor of the school. The site was formerly used for industrial waste including chemicals and hazardous substances such as arsenic, nickel and lead. The decision by the Tory-backed Labour council to permit the build on a landfill site is astonishing as the risks are well-known:
‘Health is at risk for those who live within five kilometers of a landfill site. … The results showed a strong association between Hydrogen Sulphide (used as a surrogate for all pollutants co-emitted from the landfills) and deaths caused by lung cancer, as well as deaths and hospitalizations for respiratory diseases.’
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160524211817.htm
The school has also been associated with disturbing concerns about its drinking water:
BBC Scotland’s fearful Disclosure Team were alerted to the story but, having just watched the very scary TV series about Chernobyl, have gone off to Spain following the wrong lorry of calves, again. In their absence Lisa Summers has been ordered to visit the site. She is expected to accuse the council of being dysfunctional as she did, wrongly and all by herself, NHS Tayside’s cancer treatment, after ‘finding’ further evidence such as:
Talking-up Scotland 
Yeah, I have lived in this council area for years, and we worked our butts off at the last council elections to try to get an S.N.P majority, but didn’t quite manage it, unfortunately. I can pay tribute to our hard working councillors, but ultimately they are being defeated by the toxic combination of Labour and Tories outvoting them in most debates.
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Do you have access to the planning decision documents?
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No, I’m afraid I don’t John.
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I worked in 1970s producing dye in the ICI Grangemouth plant. We knew that bladder cancer was a risk:
Chemicals called aromatic amines, such as benzidine and beta-naphthylamine, which are sometimes used in the dye industry, can cause bladder cancer. … So, smokers who also work with cancer-causing chemicals have an especially high risk of bladder cancer.
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/bladder-cancer/causes-risks-prevention/risk-factors.html
Would those chemicals be used in an ironworks?
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Apart from expressing my sympathy with those suffering – and I wish them a speedy recovery – I should like to avoid commenting on this specific case, until more information is available. I note that the union representing one of the teachers – NASUWT – has informed the Council of a possible legal claim. I have not seen any comment from the EIS and the unions representing non teaching staff.
There is a point to be made about the siting of schools in Scotland, dating back many decades. Very many schools are built on land that was deemed unsuitable for building for a wide range of other uses. Not all of these are sites like this one where there were known toxic chemicals in the past. A large number were on land above former coal mines and were subject to subsidence. Others were on former quarries. Often, these sites were on the edges of settlements rather than located ore centrally to where children lived and this meant that children had to walk out of the centre to the outskirts, often along busy roads. As car ownership became more common, increasing numbers of children were driven to and from school and this had an effect on air quality, and children’s levels of fitness and weight. Special buses were often provided, but for many years, these have been gradually withdrawn or made subject to more rigorous conditions.
I do not lay a lot of the blame for these decisions on Labour Councillors (who, for many years, represented the families of the majority of children in Scottish public schools, particularly in the industrial areas). In my experience, most of these councillors were sincerely community motivated and had an intense belief in the value of education as a way of working class people improving their lives. Decisions about the location of schools were all, ultimately, made in the Scottish Office (pre Holyrood) and by civil servants, who were UK civil servants and whose senior members were substantially privately educated and sent their children to private schools. A large majority of the private schooling in Scotland is in and around Edinburgh.
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True but as always I’m using this to compare reporting with eg the hospital infections case.
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https://www.motherwelltimes.co.uk/news/council-planner-sacked-for-taking-gifts-1-281009
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