If York is a potential site for a waste incinerator (Evening Press, January 24), the experience of the Rechem site near Bonnybridge in Scotland is interesting.

Such operations can produce dioxins (almost indestructible poisons) if the temperature falls below a critical level. Older readers may remember the dioxin release tragedy at Seveso in Italy.

Within a couple of years of Rechem starting there two babies were born without eyes in the neighbourhood. The cause was known to be potentially associated with dioxins; normally only one such case a year would be expected in the whole of Scotland.

Problems occurred with hundreds of livestock births in surrounding fields and persisted for some years. There were actions for compensation, but proving legal liability from statistics, especially with only two human cases, was too difficult - even though the initially-denied claims that the furnace temperatures had repeatedly fallen below critical were substantiated in court.

Rechem relocated the operation to South Wales. The problems around Bonnybridge have now gone.

Mike Cadoux,

Church Street,

Bubwith, Selby.

...So York has been chosen as the likely location for a massive new municipal waste incinerator. Apparently this is to comply with EC directives that limit the amount of waste put on rubbish dumps by about 50 per cent. This plan would be unnecessary if we were to raise the amount of waste recycled.

Since not everybody has a car to get to recycling points, surely the council could arrange uplift for paper and glass separately from people's homes, avoiding the need for a polluting incinerator. (The sugar beet factory is quite sufficient.)

I find that vegetable and fruit waste makes excellent compost, so how about distributing a few kitchen compost bins?

Chris Clayton,

Hempland Drive,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.