Oct 30, 2011

Radioactive waste haunts residents

Katie McGrath on Nelson Parade in Hunters Hill, the site of uranium contamination.

Struggling … Katie McGrath at Nelson Parade, Hunters Hill, says the government must stop dithering. Photo: Janie Barrett

FOR the state government it has been a lingering headache since the 1970s but for people who lived on top of radioactive waste in an exclusive harbourside suburb of Sydney it is a matter of life and death.

Katie McGrath, who spent her early life at the site of a former uranium smelter at Nelson Parade, Hunters Hill, is pleading for the O'Farrell government to clean up the site once and for all in the interest of public health.

As a three year-old in 1975, Ms McGrath lost her mother, Iris, to a mysterious cancer. Nine months later her father, Fabian, also died from the disease. Both were in their 30s.

Ms McGrath is now struggling to cope with the recent diagnosis of another family member with a potentially radiation-related illness.

At least six people who lived in Nelson Parade have died of stomach and other non-hereditary cancers.

''Every state government for four decades has known about this and all of them have sat on their hands while people have died,'' Ms McGrath told The Sun-Herald.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/radioactive-waste-haunts-residents-20111029-1mpb6.html#ixzz1cGhEz52o

Read on at