I AM flattered Brian Chrystal (Letters, March 20) recalls my efforts 20-plus years ago to raise awareness among my colleague property solicitors of potential risks to house buyers of diminution of value, of possible remediation costs and to health from land contamination.

Despite the drive to bring “brownfield” sites back into productive use, there was an almost total lack of useful information in the planning permissions/building warrants issued by the councils, and house builders only very reluctantly provided information about contamination testing and what, if any, remediation action had been taken.

In Rutherglen and surrounding areas, the hexavalent chrome pollution had been widely known about for very many decades. The Dames & Moore report of 1987 (I think), then in the Mitchell Library, identified the dump sites and disclosed that some of the most heavily contaminated had been built on with social housing. How can the council’s building control and planning departments have been ignorant of it?

Cambuslang residents living near, or in some cases on, these contaminated sites told me of instances in their families of birth defects and terminal cancers. Some, including a local GP, expressed concerns of higher than national rates of birth abnormalities, both teratogenic and mutagenic, and mortality from various cancers in the area. This was entirely discounted at the time by the then Medical Officer of Health for the Glasgow area.

Demanding a high level and quality of environmental information, I was shocked at how often pollution, of varying natures and toxicity, had been found in a residential development site but not remediated and the house just built on top.

To be fair, clients often didn’t want to know; they simply saw it as another delay by the solicitor. One client memorably told me not to say anything because he and his wife had already bought their new carpets.

The "polluter pays" principle only applies if the polluter remains in existence. If not then it may be the current landowner, or community and its representative council that picks up the tab for remediation not only of that land but also for any neighbouring properties to which that pollution may have migrated.

Your recent article reported that White’s contamination will cost tens of millions to remediate but that White's was taken over by Eagescliffe Chemical Company whose factory has since closed. As I recall my research, neither White's nor the company that acquired were liquidated, although they ceased to exist in the physical trading sense, but continued legal existence as a subsidiary. Despite the fact White's by now may have ceased to exist there may be a larger chemical company that is unwittingly still holding its historic environmental liability. Perhaps that bears further research.

Perhaps it’s time to apply to such environmental contamination disasters the same principles that apply in personal asbestosis/mesothelioma cases. That irrespective of the responsible polluter ceasing to exist their insurers of record at the time still bear direct liability.

Alasdair Sampson,

The Pines,

7A Loudon Street, Stewarton.

I AGREE with those citizens who wish to rename Overtoun Park after the Labour Leader Keir Hardie in memory of his campaign against John White, whose legacy of pollution has now re-emerged with potentially horrific consequences ("Call to rename park honouring tycoon behind toxic pollution", The Herald, March 20).

Lord Overtoun escaped punishment for his infamous practices and stripping him of his title retrospectively will do nothing to deter current polluters. What is urgently required is powerful tax legislation and affirmative action against contemporary offenders such as Ineos and the multi-national oil companies. Chemical and extractive industries such as coal and shale oil have all left their blight as the unwanted inheritance of future generations. The oil industry has already indicated its unwillingness to de-commission its redundant rigs and plastic and asbestos waste will continue to provide unwelcome hazards. The British Government, which has extracted huge wealth from the proceeds of oil, must accept overall responsibility for its failure to curtail pollution.

The renamed Keir Hardie Park should also erect a memorial to Alexander Petrie, the editor and publisher of the Glasgow Clincher, who had the last word with one of the most famous headlines in Scottish journalism on John White’s death: “Consternation in Heaven! Lord Overtoun fails to arrive!”

Michael Donnelly,

343 West Princes Street, Glasgow.