Michael Meacher, Environment Minister, speaks about pollution and health risks from incinerators. More on our links page Hull City Council wants to build an incinerator on Foster Street to burn domestic rubbish.
Incinerators give off fumes which contain toxic chemicals, including dioxins.
The US Environment Protection Agency has shown a definite link with cancer. Even low-level exposure is known to interfere with the immune and reproductive systems Dioxin in chicken feed in Belgium caused nationwide food panic recently. Incinerating rubbish leaves behind poisonous ash. This has to be loaded onto lorries, and driven out of Hull to get to the landfill site. It has been estimated that the rubbish incinerator in Newcastle could lead to 800 deaths and 1,600 hospital cases over the next 20 years because of the exposure to chemicals through emissions and dioxins getting into the food chain.