ONE of Scotland's most popular coastal resorts, used by thousands of families every year, is badly contaminated with radioactive waste dumped by an old military base, the Sunday Herald can reveal.
But in a move which has frustrated the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), angered experts and infuriated local residents, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is refusing to take responsibility for cleaning it up.
A new survey commissioned by Sepa has uncovered nearly 100 radiation hotspots around the shore at Dalgety Bay in Fife. The area includes a beach and Scotland's largest sailing club, and is next to a housing estate.
According to government advisers, people who come into contact with the contamination could receive doses of radiation in breach of official safety limits. There is a danger of skin burns and, at worst, an increased risk of cancer.
Dalgety Bay was surveyed by Babcock Engineering Services of Rosyth during March this year. A copy of the report summarising the survey results was released by Sepa last week in response to a request from the Sunday Herald.
Radioactive contamination up to 48 times higher than normal levels was found at 97 separate locations on the foreshore, the report said. It also disclosed that an unpublished survey in 2002 had detected contamination at 93 locations, and another in 2000 had found 80 hotspots.
Contamination was first discovered at Dalgety Bay in 1990, prompting a flurry of official inquiries and promises to clean up the area.
During the 1990s, radioactive waste was regularly removed from the foreshore and taken to the Rosyth naval dockyard for storage.
But in recent years, the report revealed, the contamination has returned - and none of it has been removed.
This is because Rosyth, which has since been contracted out to Babcock by the MoD, is no longer willing to accept the waste.
Sepa is now pressing the MoD for a solution. Sepa's director of environmental protection, Colin Bayes, said:
"We are committed to undertake further monitoring and removal of radioactive material, which requires the MoD's assistance in disposal."
A full scientific investigation is needed to map out the sources and spread of the contamination, and work out how to prevent it, he argued.
"The contamination at Dalgety Bay is of continued concern, " he added.
Dr Michael Clark, a radiation expert from the government's Health Protection Agency, said that prolonged contact with some of the waste that had been found "could give skin exposures that exceed the radiation dose limits for the public".
In June this year, the government's Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment pointed out that cancer rates in the part of Fife that includes Dalgety Bay were unusually high. But it added that the figures were hard to interpret.
According to Sepa, the radioactivity comes from waste dumped on the foreshore after the nearby naval air base at Donibristle closed in 1959. The dials of planes at the base were coated with the luminous radioactive metal radium so they could be read at night.
The planes were broken up and burnt along with other rubbish, then disposed of as landfill to form a new headland at Dalgety Bay. The surrounding foreshore is now littered with bits of metal and furnace clinker which set off radiation monitors.
The MoD pointed out, however, that Dalgety Bay had not been a defence estate since the mid-1960s.
A spokeswoman claimed:
"We continue to work closely with Sepa to establish the cause of the contamination, but investigations so far have proved inconclusive."
Last week, Sepa met the MoD, along with the Scottish Executive and Fife Council, to discuss how to tackle the pollution. Tomorrow, the agency's radiation experts will be talking with representatives of Dalgety Bay and Hillend Community Council.
The community council will be calling for the contamination to be removed as soon as possible. Council chairman, Colin McPhail said: "The community is tired of this matter not being properly dealt with."
His son, Sandy McPhail, is a leading member of the Dalgety Bay Sailing Club, which is by far the biggest user of the contaminated foreshore. The old aircraft dials and propeller pieces he has found have convinced him the MoD is to blame.
"The risk shouldn't be blown out of proportion, but it is a risk, " he said. "And it's because someone did something wrong 50 years ago."
Fife Council and the Scottish Executive both stressed that the risk to the public was low. It was "disappointing" that radiation levels had not reduced, said an Executive spokesman, but the situation was being monitored.
But this wasn't good enough for David Harvie, the Scottish author of Deadly Sunshine: A History Of Radium, published in July. "Radiation cannot be destroyed, and sweeping it under the carpet will simply not do, " he said. "The Dalgety Bay site ought to have been comprehensively decontaminated, since the MoD must have a clear line of responsibility from the original polluters."
The fact that radioactive waste was resurfacing there was "unacceptable", Harvie argued. At least three other sites in Scotland have been contaminated with radium, which takes thousands of years to decay. They are an old army depot at Forthside in Stirling, and the sites of former radium plants at Balloch, Dunbartonshire and Wishaw, Lanarkshire.
Harvie said: "It would show more concern for public health and safety if such sites were properly identified and decontaminated, rather than covered over, redeveloped and left liable to the kind of continuing problem that has been exposed at Dalgety Bay."
DALGETY BAY, FIFE
Stretch of the shoreline around the sailing club is contaminated with radium dumped after the closure of a nearby Royal Navy air base at Donibristle.
FORTHSIDE, STIRLING
Vacant land near the railway station has been contaminated with radium from an old army luminising depot.
BALLOCH, DUNBARTONSHIRE
A site now used as a boat yard contaminated by MacArthur's Loch Lomond Radium Works, which closed in 1928.
WISHAW, LANARKSHIRE
Land next to Castlehill primary school contaminated by a radium plant run by Smith's Industries.
CARLISLE, CUMBRIA
An RAF base suffered widespread contamination from radium that had been incinerated and dumped.
Source: Deadly Sunshine: The History and Fatal Legacy of Radium, David Harvie (Tempus, 2005).
NEED TO KNOW
Radium, a radioactive metal with a half-life of 1602 years, was widely used in the past to make dials, watches and signs glow in the dark. But now, dumped or left as waste, it has contaminated four sites across Scotland.
NEED TO KNOW MORE?
Deadly Sunshine: The History and Fatal Legacy of Radium by David Harvie (Tempus, 2005).
www. sepa. org. uk/radio activity
www. hpa. org. uk/radiation
www. comare. org. uk
www. dalgetybaysc. org
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