By Robyn Marshall
A large area around Greenham Common air base in Britain was seriously contaminated by radioactivity at some time before 1961, according to a article in the July 20 New Scientist.
Greenham Common was the site of a long occupation by women against the stationing of Cruise missiles by the US Air Force at the base in the 1980s. It became a major symbol for the women's movement and the peace movement worldwide.
Two reports that originally came from the British Ministry of Defence were declassified after an extract was leaked to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The radioactive contamination came from a nuclear weapon burned in an accident at the US base in 1958.
The other report, written in 1986, said that there can be little doubt that levels of uranium-235 were well above those normally expected. Two scientists in 1961 discovered the radioactivity after finding laurel leaves in the area contained 100 times more uranium-235 than could be explained by emissions from Aldermaston nuclear plant, about 10 kilometres from Greenham Common.
The uranium-235 was detected in two large circles to the east and west of Greenham Common. It was calculated that 10-20 grams of powdered radioactive uranium must have been released into the environment.
The contamination originated from a fire which engulfed a parked US Air Force B-47 bomber containing a nuclear weapon after a tank of fuel was jettisoned by another bomber with engine trouble on February 28, 1958. Foliage up to 13 kilometres away was contaminated with uranium-235.
This means that all the thousands of women who camped at Greenham Common over the years must have been contaminated by the surrounding radioactivity. On several occasions during the occupation some women complained of feeling ill, with headaches and nausea and had thought they were being bombarded by long-wave electromagnetic waves in an experiment by the US.
Radioactivity may now be the explanation. There should be an immediate investigation and free medical examination for all those women who attended Greenham Common and an investigation into any cases of cancer that have arisen.
Both the British Ministry of Defence and the US government have always denied that nuclear weapons were involved in the 1958 accident. The British Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment is now expected to reopen its 1989 investigation into the cause of an excess of leukaemia cases among young children in the area. The committee has previously criticised managers of Sellafield and Dounreay nuclear plants for not revealing all they knew about nuclear accidents in the past.