The survey detailed health issues residents were diagnosed with between 1990 and 2016. It focuses mainly on Wattleup, which sits within the Kwinana air buffer zone, and which former member of parliament Graham Kierath has since contended should not have been built. "When we were clearing out Wattleup, we found huge clusters of cancers that were three and four times the cancer rates anywhere else in Western Australia," he told WAtoday earlier this year. "There was maps of the pollution and Wattleup and Hope Valley were right smack in those areas." Ms Ricci and her fellow residents have gathered responses from 26 individuals who lived in that suburb alone between 1990 and 2016, finding a number had been diagnosed with various cancers and respiratory illnesses over the years.

Of the conditions, one resident lost both their parents to the same form of cancer and another said their respiratory condition cleared up the moment they moved from the suburb in 2002. Four members of one family experienced three types of cancer throughout their 30-year stay, and another had three members struck down with cancer at different points. Eva Ricci outside her old home in Wattleup. She moved from the home 11 years ago, and she observed members of her own family and many neighbours suffer with their health. Credit:Hannah Barry A common thread among residents who responded to the survey were respiratory-related illnesses, including asthma, lung cancer and sinusitis. Many residents said they had become sick after moving to the area, or after drinking rain water from their market-garden tanks.

"The smell of sulphur in my workplace from time to time will instantly remind me of getting out of school in the afternoon at Wattleup primary," one respondent said. Ms Ricci previously began questioning WA government agencies when she noticed the significant number of neighbours developing terminal illnesses. "There were definitely clusters of cancer, but nobody took that on board," she said. "There was absolutely no acknowledgement at the time that [health concerns] were the reason we were being moved out. "If it should never have been built, it's now not just the townsite, but also now a whole periphery of people who have been exposed to those same health risks over the years."

Despite Mr Kierath's assertion he believed cancer clusters were noted in the Wattleup and Hope Valley area at the time of their clear-out, the Department of Health maintains there was never any formal investigation. "Although the Department of Health received one query about cancer incidence specific to Wattelup and Hope Valley in 2009 and several queries relating to the broader Kwinana area between 2006 and 2012, our records show no reports of cancer clusters in the area," a spokeswoman said. The Latitude 32 development. Credit:Hannah Barry When asked if the department had received any requests to investigate a suspected cancer cluster in the area, the spokeswoman said it hadn't. Looking back

The Department of Health has previously conducted two studies into health in the area in the wake of revelations in 2002 that sulphur dioxide emissions pumped out of the Kwinana air buffer zone in the 1970s reached a total of 300 tonnes. It was found Wattleup in particular been disproportionately affected by "unacceptable air quality" throughout the same decade. But a seven-year-old report into the health risks associated with living in the Kwinana Buffer Zone was only published online a week after WAtoday first inquired about the local survey. The 2011 report by the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, UWA and WHO Collaborating Centre for Research in Children’s Environmental Health was not available online up until Tuesday, nearly a full week after WAtoday submitted questions about its publication status. The report surveyed 588 children and attempted to study what respiratory symptoms they experienced while living close to the Kwinana Industrial Area.

The conclusions were conflicting, with some results in line with typical respiratory behaviour while others elevated depending on when and how long children had lived in the area. "Overall there is little evidence that children in Kwinana have more respiratory symptoms than children from other areas of Perth," the report said. "There is also little evidence that, using distance as a proxy for exposure, children living or going to school closer to industry have more symptoms than children living or going to school further from industry. "However, Kwinana children seem to have had more wheezy symptoms when they were very young — less than three years. "There was significantly more reported ‘wheeze ever’ but not ‘current wheeze’ or ‘current asthma’ for children who had lived in Kwinana from before the age of three years compared to children who had moved to Kwinana after the age of three years."

The report recommended health authorities investigate further into the early wheeze experienced by young Kwinana children, and what could cause it. A copy of the document. It also recommended a running assessment be conducted in the Kwinana area to keep an eye on early wheeze, as it could have greater implications for lung function in the future. The 2011 report builds on 2004 work done by the Department of Health, which also aimed to find out whether residents living near the Kwinana Industrial Strip had experienced health effects due to living in the area. The conditions the report associated as being "significantly associated" with living around the Kwinana Industrial Strip included cancer and a respiratory condition other than asthma.