Daily Telegraph: Mysterious radiation in Reading
Exclusion zone
Raymond Fox claims that radioactivity at his former home has blighted his health - so he refuses to return. His neighbours and the local council insist that the area is perfectly safe. David Rowan investigates a suburban mystery
It is something of a riddle how Raymond Fox's detached suburban home came to be contaminated with plutonium and uranium. Since his family abandoned the four-bedroom house two years ago, following his diagnosis with severe radiation poisoning, Mr Fox has devoted his remaining strength to uncovering the truth about 337 Wokingham Road, in the comfortable Reading suburb of Earley.
At first, he thought the radioactivity might be connected with the nearby atomic weapons plant at Aldermaston; or perhaps the result of a hushed-up air crash involving a damaged nuclear weapon. But since he discovered toxic black sludge in drains leading from the former Shell depot next door, Mr Fox has drawn a conclusion which, if true, has far more worrying implications for his neighbours. Somewhere beneath the bottom of his garden, he is convinced, there was once - perhaps still is - a secret nuclear bunker.
Mr Fox, a short, frail 53-year-old, has built up filing cabinets full of witness statements, photographs and contamination test results that, he says, will prove what has made number 337 "the most radioactive house in Britain". He refuses to go back inside, his symptoms worsening whenever he returns. Scientists who have examined the property confirm unusually high radiation levels in and around it.
The latest independent tests, conducted in June, identified "a source of material from a nuclear reactor or a nuclear bomb in the vicinity of the property" - and warned that a neighbouring road where children play was so contaminated with radium and uranium that it represented "a public health hazard".
There can be few more shocking claims to confront a quiet, residential neighbourhood, yet no exclusion order has ever been placed on this leafy part of Earley, and no steps have been taken to rehouse anxious local families. The statutory authorities Mr Fox has turned to - from the Environment Agency to the local council - have uniformly denied that residents have anything to worry about, and Shell denies that its site ever housed a nuclear facility. The council insists that the radiation detected is still at a relatively low level and so "gives no cause for concern in respect of public safety".
Unconvinced, Mr Fox and his lawyers have now taken their "explosive" dossier of evidence to the European Commission - which, they believe, will finally expose official complacency as part of "a gigantic nuclear cover-up".
In the meantime, the residents of Amber Close, the neat Persimmon housing development built three years ago on the site of the former Shell depot, appear more concerned about the impact on property values than any immediate health risks. "We've been trying to sell our house since July, and if Mr Fox stops us we'll be really cross with him," says the mother of a young baby who, like most of the neighbours, declined to be named. "If there was proof of some historic nuclear bunker underneath these houses, it wouldn't be so bad - but the council says there's nothing wrong. What does he expect us to do, for God's sake?"
Deserted: 337 Wokingham Road
"Of course, it's going to devalue houses," says a sceptical local shopkeeper. "I've lived here since 1970, and brought up two children here, and there's nothing wrong with them. Do I look like I glow in the dark?"
The doubters do not bother Mr Fox and his growing support team - among them anti-nuclear campaigners, volunteer press officers, anti-corporate activists, as well as the local Green MEP, Caroline Lucas. At one stage, his house was covered with "Danger: Radiation" signs visible to any commuter driving between the town centre and the M4 approach roads. Today, though, it is distinguishable by the tarpaulin hanging over the leaking front roof, the dishevelled caravan blocking the driveway, and the stench of damp that hits you as the front door opens into the mould-infested hallway.
Deserted suddenly in spring 2001, when Mr Fox finally persuaded his then wife Susan to move elsewhere with the children, number 337 today reflects the painful disruption of a family's life. Crockery and pans lie half-washed on the draining-board; a pile of folded towels sits in the bathroom waiting to be put away. Children's toys spill out of boxes on the playroom floor - a Star Wars jigsaw puzzle, a stuffed clown and a tennis racquet, long forgotten now beside a creased copy of The Daily Telegraph dated April 6, 2001.
Upstairs in the main bedroom, a Swan Teasmade pays homage to domestic comforts long given up. A child's Vanilla Ice cassette lies unspooling on a bed below a Winnie-the-Pooh noticeboard. According to the "Untidy Room Certificate" on the door, this bedroom once belonged to the Foxes' son, Christopher.
But it is in the main living-room, where the crumbling floor joists lie exposed, that one is starkly reminded what has kept the house empty for so long. The timbers have been eaten away by what Mr Fox calls "radioactive seepage". The radiation also explains, he says, the blistering paint on walls facing the former Shell plant. In a car parked a safe distance away from the house, he reads the conclusion of a "scintillation counter" investigation conducted in June by Dr Chris Busby, a radiation specialist who took samples from the garden and the drains running underneath it, and from an adjoining road, Lambourne Gardens. The caesium and plutonium ratios found in the drain, Dr Busby noted, showed that "highly concentrated material containing plutonium-239" was once present.
Additionally, the Lambourne Gardens samples contained enough radium-226, and possibly uranium-235, to constitute a public health hazard. Such isotopes, he pointed out, could have come only from a nearby nuclear reactor or a nuclear bomb. The council and Shell stressed that Dr Busby's study has not altered their views, based on earlier evidence, that there is no current source of radiation and no evidence of a historic source.
The Fox family, with two children and two adopted children, paid £150,000 for the house at the height of the 1988 property boom. Life was good: a builder whose £1.5 million firm was offered work at Windsor Castle, Mr Fox owned other homes in Sussex and a Tenerife timeshare.
But soon he began to fall mysteriously ill - gut trouble, back problems, a constant nausea. "We also had problems at the house, such as raw sewage coming up through the drains, the vegetables refusing to grow in the garden, and the pet rabbits dying," he recalls. "And then one day we spotted the white worms."
Neighbours had also spotted them. "A friend said, if you've got white worms, you've got trouble. That's a sign of radiation."
By 1995, Mr Fox's health was deteriorating quickly. In retrospect, things became much worse after he went down in the drains to investigate a leak, and emerged covered in "black sludge", which had apparently come from the Shell site. Shell cleaned out the pipe after Mr Fox alerted them to its contents. Shell acknowledges that there was a cleaning operation. No publicly disclosed tests were conducted. Mr Fox contends that the material they took away was radioactive. "I didn't realise that this stuff was lethal," he says now. "I was being sick all the time, bleeding terribly all over my body, and my moods were changing. From my diaries, I now realise that whenever I went to Sussex for a weekend, I was fine - but when I worked in the garden, near that drain, I was taken ill on the Monday."
Mr Fox: 'That house is riddled with contamination'
His father mentioned that, while in Germany during the war, he had learned a little about the effects of radiation. He encouraged Raymond to go for independent tests. Dr Josef Kees, a specialist in Bad Homburg, Germany, who had worked with Chernobyl children, agreed to see him.
Dr Kees diagnosed "chronic multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome", involving "radiation-induced toxicodermatitis" and a range of problems linked to uranium and lindane exposure. Mr Fox was prescribed months of detoxification treatments that, he says, saved his life. The marriage, however, was not to survive, and Mr Fox, who lost his business and was made bankrupt, now lives in a one-bedroom flat in central Reading, from where his campaign for justice continues.
Mr Fox has gained a reputation locally as a rather difficult man, who is quick to declaim the "conspiracy" he believes is designed to silence him and save Shell and the Government the expense of rehousing the residents of Earley. He may not have helped his case by refusing the Environment Agency's scientists access to his home, or by engaging in frequent if unsuccessful litigation against those he believes are maligning him.
Wokingham District Council insists that it has investigated his concerns "fully and extensively" in partnership with the Environment Agency and the National Radiological Protection Board, yet found no evidence to substantiate them. In 2001, the Environment Agency and the council tested soil, pebbles, grit and household dust near the property and concluded that the results showed radioactivity at "levels expected in any area of the country which is not close to a radiation source", which contradicts the findings of tests Enviro Consultants and Analysts carried out on behalf of Mr Fox's insurers.
That study found unusually high levels of two isotopes of plutonium and three isotopes of uranium. The family were advised to vacate their home. The council's assessment of both surveys combined "did not give us any further reason to carry out more investigation of this matter", it told The Daily Telegraph.
Shell, for its part, insists that its Earley depot was a conventional oil-storage terminal, and that the company has never operated a nuclear site there or anywhere else in the UK. "I have no idea what is the cause of Mr Fox's health problems and we're obviously very sorry about them, but I can only reiterate that Shell had no nuclear facility there," says Justin Everard, a spokesman for Shell. "Because we are a large oil company, some people are convinced we must be involved in some terrible subterfuge. But it's not in the interests of Shell to pursue secrecy - we've got too much to lose."
That still leaves important questions over the source of the radiation identified in and around 337 Wokingham Road. Besides Dr Busby's test, an earlier analysis for Mr Fox's insurers also detected unusually high levels of radioactivity. Michael Meacher, when Environment Secretary, suggested that the cause might be a fire affecting a railway fuel wagon near the Shell site; others have speculated that there was a nearby underground explosion, or perhaps a leak from a 1950s atomic bomb.
For as long as the speculation continues, the homeowners of Amber Close and the surrounding streets can only curse the publicity that they fear may imperil their house values.
Estate agents, in the meantime, still have a job to do. For the past year, the local firm of Haslams has had the unenviable task of selling the now notorious house "at offers in excess of £200,000".
Remarkably, it has attracted a serious offer above this price - an achievement that fills Mr Fox with disgust and suspicion. "That house is riddled with contamination," he says angrily. "Why would I want someone else to fall ill or die, when it's got to be torn down?"
"The prospective buyer, who is well known to us, is quite aware of Mr Fox's claims, and I very much doubt that he's part of some conspiracy," an agent from Haslams says with a philosophical sigh. "Maybe one day this house will be sold and we won't hear anything more of it. Then again," and he breaks into an intense laugh, "these things are sent to challenge us estate agents."
(Daily Telegraph, Property section front, November 3 2003)
Raymond Fox claims that radioactivity at his former home has blighted his health - so he refuses to return. His neighbours and the local council insist that the area is perfectly safe. David Rowan investigates a suburban mystery
It is something of a riddle how Raymond Fox's detached suburban home came to be contaminated with plutonium and uranium. Since his family abandoned the four-bedroom house two years ago, following his diagnosis with severe radiation poisoning, Mr Fox has devoted his remaining strength to uncovering the truth about 337 Wokingham Road, in the comfortable Reading suburb of Earley.
At first, he thought the radioactivity might be connected with the nearby atomic weapons plant at Aldermaston; or perhaps the result of a hushed-up air crash involving a damaged nuclear weapon. But since he discovered toxic black sludge in drains leading from the former Shell depot next door, Mr Fox has drawn a conclusion which, if true, has far more worrying implications for his neighbours. Somewhere beneath the bottom of his garden, he is convinced, there was once - perhaps still is - a secret nuclear bunker.
Mr Fox, a short, frail 53-year-old, has built up filing cabinets full of witness statements, photographs and contamination test results that, he says, will prove what has made number 337 "the most radioactive house in Britain". He refuses to go back inside, his symptoms worsening whenever he returns. Scientists who have examined the property confirm unusually high radiation levels in and around it.
The latest independent tests, conducted in June, identified "a source of material from a nuclear reactor or a nuclear bomb in the vicinity of the property" - and warned that a neighbouring road where children play was so contaminated with radium and uranium that it represented "a public health hazard".
There can be few more shocking claims to confront a quiet, residential neighbourhood, yet no exclusion order has ever been placed on this leafy part of Earley, and no steps have been taken to rehouse anxious local families. The statutory authorities Mr Fox has turned to - from the Environment Agency to the local council - have uniformly denied that residents have anything to worry about, and Shell denies that its site ever housed a nuclear facility. The council insists that the radiation detected is still at a relatively low level and so "gives no cause for concern in respect of public safety".
Unconvinced, Mr Fox and his lawyers have now taken their "explosive" dossier of evidence to the European Commission - which, they believe, will finally expose official complacency as part of "a gigantic nuclear cover-up".
In the meantime, the residents of Amber Close, the neat Persimmon housing development built three years ago on the site of the former Shell depot, appear more concerned about the impact on property values than any immediate health risks. "We've been trying to sell our house since July, and if Mr Fox stops us we'll be really cross with him," says the mother of a young baby who, like most of the neighbours, declined to be named. "If there was proof of some historic nuclear bunker underneath these houses, it wouldn't be so bad - but the council says there's nothing wrong. What does he expect us to do, for God's sake?"
Deserted: 337 Wokingham Road
"Of course, it's going to devalue houses," says a sceptical local shopkeeper. "I've lived here since 1970, and brought up two children here, and there's nothing wrong with them. Do I look like I glow in the dark?"
The doubters do not bother Mr Fox and his growing support team - among them anti-nuclear campaigners, volunteer press officers, anti-corporate activists, as well as the local Green MEP, Caroline Lucas. At one stage, his house was covered with "Danger: Radiation" signs visible to any commuter driving between the town centre and the M4 approach roads. Today, though, it is distinguishable by the tarpaulin hanging over the leaking front roof, the dishevelled caravan blocking the driveway, and the stench of damp that hits you as the front door opens into the mould-infested hallway.
Deserted suddenly in spring 2001, when Mr Fox finally persuaded his then wife Susan to move elsewhere with the children, number 337 today reflects the painful disruption of a family's life. Crockery and pans lie half-washed on the draining-board; a pile of folded towels sits in the bathroom waiting to be put away. Children's toys spill out of boxes on the playroom floor - a Star Wars jigsaw puzzle, a stuffed clown and a tennis racquet, long forgotten now beside a creased copy of The Daily Telegraph dated April 6, 2001.
Upstairs in the main bedroom, a Swan Teasmade pays homage to domestic comforts long given up. A child's Vanilla Ice cassette lies unspooling on a bed below a Winnie-the-Pooh noticeboard. According to the "Untidy Room Certificate" on the door, this bedroom once belonged to the Foxes' son, Christopher.
But it is in the main living-room, where the crumbling floor joists lie exposed, that one is starkly reminded what has kept the house empty for so long. The timbers have been eaten away by what Mr Fox calls "radioactive seepage". The radiation also explains, he says, the blistering paint on walls facing the former Shell plant. In a car parked a safe distance away from the house, he reads the conclusion of a "scintillation counter" investigation conducted in June by Dr Chris Busby, a radiation specialist who took samples from the garden and the drains running underneath it, and from an adjoining road, Lambourne Gardens. The caesium and plutonium ratios found in the drain, Dr Busby noted, showed that "highly concentrated material containing plutonium-239" was once present.
Additionally, the Lambourne Gardens samples contained enough radium-226, and possibly uranium-235, to constitute a public health hazard. Such isotopes, he pointed out, could have come only from a nearby nuclear reactor or a nuclear bomb. The council and Shell stressed that Dr Busby's study has not altered their views, based on earlier evidence, that there is no current source of radiation and no evidence of a historic source.
The Fox family, with two children and two adopted children, paid £150,000 for the house at the height of the 1988 property boom. Life was good: a builder whose £1.5 million firm was offered work at Windsor Castle, Mr Fox owned other homes in Sussex and a Tenerife timeshare.
But soon he began to fall mysteriously ill - gut trouble, back problems, a constant nausea. "We also had problems at the house, such as raw sewage coming up through the drains, the vegetables refusing to grow in the garden, and the pet rabbits dying," he recalls. "And then one day we spotted the white worms."
Neighbours had also spotted them. "A friend said, if you've got white worms, you've got trouble. That's a sign of radiation."
By 1995, Mr Fox's health was deteriorating quickly. In retrospect, things became much worse after he went down in the drains to investigate a leak, and emerged covered in "black sludge", which had apparently come from the Shell site. Shell cleaned out the pipe after Mr Fox alerted them to its contents. Shell acknowledges that there was a cleaning operation. No publicly disclosed tests were conducted. Mr Fox contends that the material they took away was radioactive. "I didn't realise that this stuff was lethal," he says now. "I was being sick all the time, bleeding terribly all over my body, and my moods were changing. From my diaries, I now realise that whenever I went to Sussex for a weekend, I was fine - but when I worked in the garden, near that drain, I was taken ill on the Monday."
Mr Fox: 'That house is riddled with contamination'
His father mentioned that, while in Germany during the war, he had learned a little about the effects of radiation. He encouraged Raymond to go for independent tests. Dr Josef Kees, a specialist in Bad Homburg, Germany, who had worked with Chernobyl children, agreed to see him.
Dr Kees diagnosed "chronic multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome", involving "radiation-induced toxicodermatitis" and a range of problems linked to uranium and lindane exposure. Mr Fox was prescribed months of detoxification treatments that, he says, saved his life. The marriage, however, was not to survive, and Mr Fox, who lost his business and was made bankrupt, now lives in a one-bedroom flat in central Reading, from where his campaign for justice continues.
Mr Fox has gained a reputation locally as a rather difficult man, who is quick to declaim the "conspiracy" he believes is designed to silence him and save Shell and the Government the expense of rehousing the residents of Earley. He may not have helped his case by refusing the Environment Agency's scientists access to his home, or by engaging in frequent if unsuccessful litigation against those he believes are maligning him.
Wokingham District Council insists that it has investigated his concerns "fully and extensively" in partnership with the Environment Agency and the National Radiological Protection Board, yet found no evidence to substantiate them. In 2001, the Environment Agency and the council tested soil, pebbles, grit and household dust near the property and concluded that the results showed radioactivity at "levels expected in any area of the country which is not close to a radiation source", which contradicts the findings of tests Enviro Consultants and Analysts carried out on behalf of Mr Fox's insurers.
That study found unusually high levels of two isotopes of plutonium and three isotopes of uranium. The family were advised to vacate their home. The council's assessment of both surveys combined "did not give us any further reason to carry out more investigation of this matter", it told The Daily Telegraph.
Shell, for its part, insists that its Earley depot was a conventional oil-storage terminal, and that the company has never operated a nuclear site there or anywhere else in the UK. "I have no idea what is the cause of Mr Fox's health problems and we're obviously very sorry about them, but I can only reiterate that Shell had no nuclear facility there," says Justin Everard, a spokesman for Shell. "Because we are a large oil company, some people are convinced we must be involved in some terrible subterfuge. But it's not in the interests of Shell to pursue secrecy - we've got too much to lose."
That still leaves important questions over the source of the radiation identified in and around 337 Wokingham Road. Besides Dr Busby's test, an earlier analysis for Mr Fox's insurers also detected unusually high levels of radioactivity. Michael Meacher, when Environment Secretary, suggested that the cause might be a fire affecting a railway fuel wagon near the Shell site; others have speculated that there was a nearby underground explosion, or perhaps a leak from a 1950s atomic bomb.
For as long as the speculation continues, the homeowners of Amber Close and the surrounding streets can only curse the publicity that they fear may imperil their house values.
Estate agents, in the meantime, still have a job to do. For the past year, the local firm of Haslams has had the unenviable task of selling the now notorious house "at offers in excess of £200,000".
Remarkably, it has attracted a serious offer above this price - an achievement that fills Mr Fox with disgust and suspicion. "That house is riddled with contamination," he says angrily. "Why would I want someone else to fall ill or die, when it's got to be torn down?"
"The prospective buyer, who is well known to us, is quite aware of Mr Fox's claims, and I very much doubt that he's part of some conspiracy," an agent from Haslams says with a philosophical sigh. "Maybe one day this house will be sold and we won't hear anything more of it. Then again," and he breaks into an intense laugh, "these things are sent to challenge us estate agents."
(Daily Telegraph, Property section front, November 3 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Saturday, November 29, 2003
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