Freeclaim Solicitors News
Another Manchester Professor Falls Ill
Tue 13th Jan 09 - 12:33
The rooms in Manchester University's Rutherford building, used at the start of the 20th century by Ernest Rutherford for nuclear experiments, as well as the rooms directly below them, are proving desperately unlucky places. Professor Tom Whiston, 70, is the latest former occupant of one of these rooms to develop pancreatic cancer. Two of his former colleagues have died recently of pancreatic cancer: Dr Hugh Wagner, who dies in 2007 aged 62, and Dr Arthur Reade, who dies last year aged 69. In all three men, the illness progressed fast.
"Pancreatic cancer is not a common form of cancer, and three cases is a startlingly high incidence," says Manchester Solicitor Liz Graham, who is spearheading a campaign for an investigation into the building's history and represents Wagner's widow and other former occupants who are considering a claim against the University.
Others in contact with the areas around Rutherford's laboratory have fallen victim to cancer. Dr John Clark died of a brain tumour, aged 62 in 1992. Like the others, the progress of his illness was swift, and his son, Olly Clark, believes his death may have been caused by radiation in the Rutherford building. A 56 year old maintenance technician, who worked there for 30 years, frequently drilling holes in the affected rooms, has developed thyroid cancer.
In 1999, the rooms near and above and below Rutherford's former laboratories were discovered to be contaminated with nuclear materials and mercury. The staff who worked there did not find out until 2001, and then only by chance, when one of them found that his office had been labeled a radiation hazard zone. In 2002, another member of staff found a hazard warning notice on his office door. Radiation hotspots were marked on the carpet, directly below the chair he used at his desk.
A detailed report by three other psychology lecturers who worked in or near the affected rooms claims that the university suspected as early as the 1970s that there was a potential radiation hazard. "The contamination may have contributed to the deaths of our colleagues," says the 294-page report by Dr John Churcher, Dr Don O'Boyle and Dr Neil Todd. All three occupied rooms now known to have been contaminated.
Source: The Guardian