Driver admits he 'poisoned' water supply to 20,000 homes

Inquest: Carole Cross was found to have abnormal levels of aluminium in her brain after drinking the polluted water in Camelford, Cornwall

A delivery driver told an inquest yesterday that he mistakenly dumped 20 tons of aluminium sulphate into the wrong tank at a water treatment works, causing Britain’s worst mass poisoning.

Relief driver John Stephens said he let himself into the Lowermoor treatment works, near Camelford, north Cornwall.



When no one from the South West Water Authority, which ran the works, turned up, he opened what he thought was the correct manhole and emptied his tank.



His error affected water supplied to about 20,000 homes, causing rashes, diarrhoea, mouth ulcers and other health problems.



The water became so polluted that customers reported hairs sticking to their bodies ‘like superglue’ as they got out of the bath, the inquest at Shire Hall, Taunton, was told.



People who rang the water authority switchboard were told the water was safe to drink and some were even advised to boil it, which increased levels of aluminium still further.



They were only told three weeks later that something had been added accidentally to the water.



The reopened inquest follows the death 16 years after the 1988 incident of Carole Cross, 59.

She had been living in Camelford at the time of the poisoning of the water.



The coroner said in 2005 that Mrs Cross had a neurological disease ‘usually associated with Alzheimer’s’.



But an ‘abnormally high level of aluminium’ in her brain may have resulted from her exposure to the metal following the incident.



At that time, the inquest was adjourned until further research was completed.

Pollution: Lowermoor Water Treatment Works in Camelford, Cornwall where the heavy metals were dumped

A draft report into the incident, published in 2005, said it was unlikely the chemical would have caused any persistent or delayed health effects. A committee is expected to finalise the report following the coroner’s ruling.

Mrs Cross’s husband Doug, a scientist and long-term Lowermoor campaigner, now of Cumbria, is due to give evidence on Thursday.



The inquest was adjourned until tomorrow.



In 1991, the South West Water Authority was fined £10,000 with £25,000 costs after being convicted of supplying water likely to endanger public health.

