Following SEPA's (Scottish Environment Protection Agency) allegation of a radioactivity hazard in Dalgety Bay, Gordon Brown is seeking to get the armed forces to spend an unknown sum on carting away the beach to some unguessable place.
There is no radiation hazard. Though SEPA publicly claimed to have found radium in paint particles, in response to FoI (Freedom of Information) inquiries they have been unable to produce any factual basis for their claim. They have been caught out claiming to have detected "radium and its daughter elements" by analysis of the radiation but radium has only one daughter element, the unreactive gas radon, which could not remain in rock. As has been pointed out, the "scientific illiteracy" required of alleged experts not to know this is staggering.
What those FoI requests also revealed is that SEPA's consultants told them years ago the radiation was "less than two-thirds that found in a typical Aberdeen street" which makes it what one would expect with naturally occurring background radiation.
Mr Brown is not serving his constituents' interests. Dalgety Bay is the repeated winner of Scotland's Best Kept Small Town Award and is a growing community attractive to Edinburghers who want to bring their families up outwith the city. The last thing such a community needs is an evidence-free and undisprovable scare story.
Neil Craig,
200 Woodlands Road, Glasgow.
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