At least five former residents of Nelson Parade, Hunters Hill, the site of a former uranium smelter, are believed to have died of radiation related cancers, Member for Castle Hill Michael Richardson revealed today. 

Three of the deaths are detailed in documents collected in the 1970s by former Federal Labor MP Tom Uren and held by the National Library in Canberra. The other two were revealed by former residents of the street, Katie and Greg McGrath, who were orphaned, along with their two siblings, in 1976, after their father, Fabian, and mother, Iris, died within nine months of one another, of stomach cancer and leukaemia respectively. Katie was just five years old.

“These deaths reinforce the need to deal properly with this problem by removing all the contaminated soil from this street,” Mr Richardson said.

A major cause of the deaths appears to have been eating vegetables grown on Nos. 7 and 9, before and after the Radiation Branch of the Department of Health conducted tests on the blocks in the mid-1960s.

“Those tests were woefully inadequate,” Mr Richardson said. “They missed massive amounts of radium contamination at No. 7 because it was underneath the house – apparently they didn’t think to look there.

“In fact, the Radiation Branch decided that ‘the gross inconvenience to residents of soil removal and filling outweighed the risks of a radiation hazard.’

“The Branch ignored the danger posed by radon gas, which was subsequently detected at levels 15 times the recommended maximum limit inside No 7.”

So slapdash was the testing a memo to Tom Uren dated November 28 1977 warned: ‘It is urgent that the Premier immediately call up all Radiation Branch original files on the Nelson Parade contamination before the ineptitude of the Branch is public knowledge.’

“The Iemma Government is still playing cover-up. It has failed to reveal the true extent of the contamination or its plans for remediating the site,” Mr Richardson said.

“A report by radiation expert Berne Scott from 1977 clearly states that ‘the only remedial action which should be considered is the complete removal of all soil from blocks no 7 and 9.

“We haven’t seen any plan from the Government that involves this, as well as cleaning up other nearby blocks as recommended in 1977.

“Morris Iemma has to make a decision. This stuff is deadly and it’s becoming more deadly as time goes on.

“One of the documents states: ‘the Government should not knowingly leave a hazard which will get clearly progressively worse during the next (?1000) years. What’s Morris Iemma got to say about that?

“One thing you can’t do is dump nuclear waste in an industrial waste dump as Mr Iemma wanted to do. They rejected that idea 30 years ago.

“The Wran Government wanted to dump it near Ivanhoe but the local community wouldn’t wear it. Plan B was to dump it at sea.

“The real answer is to store it temporarily at Lucas Heights while Mr Iemma and the Prime Minister work out a long-term disposal strategy. However, Mr Rudd might have to change the law to accommodate this strategy.”

Mr Richardson said the Government should also offer free medical testing for all residents and former residents of the street.

“This isn’t something you can get your local GP to do – it takes specialised knowledge and equipment,” he said.

“The Wran Government was prepared to test residents – the Iemma Government should make the same commitment.”