My father wrote a very eerie letter today, following some research, and I thought I would also post it on my blog...
'I write in connection with the chemical tests conducted over Norwich 41 years ago, and their possible connection with a statistically high incidence of cases of cancer of the oesophagus.
As reported in the Evening News, (5th July), documents obtained by this newspaper, detailed the dates mainly in 1964. When the city was subjected to airborne clouds of a very dangerous mixture of zinc calcium sulphide, and the subsequent particular Home Office involvement in the Norwich trial, before their scientists shifted their attention to Dorset.
In 1967 Porton Down scientists, responsible for these tests admitted that cadmium causes 'major weakness, pains in limbs and abdomen, headache and laboured breathing.' It also causes lung cancer, diarrhoea, vomiting and fibrosis scarring, and because of these properties it was considered by the allies for use as a chemical weapon during the second world war, thus proving it's lethal qualities were known prior to the instigation of the tests.
Amazingly, by the end of the series of flights no part of England and Wales escaped being sprayed by the lethal cocktail, but crucially some areas were literally blanketed by the substance.
In September 1958 an aircraft 'engaged' a specific target area with the spray, centered on Coventry.
On the assumption that Norwich also was the recipient of a heavy dose of these toxins, would it not be very useful medically to compare the Coventry statistics of mortality with those of Norwich?
In retrospect, even making due allowance for the very real dangers, (not to mention hysteria), of the cold war period, it is alarming that responsible scientists should knowingly endanger the health and well-being of their own countrymen.'
