Inside Britain’s ‘Toxic Town’ where mass poisoning scandal left Brit kids dead and born without limbs
HAVING spent almost all of her pregnancy in hospital with complications, including diabetes and pre-eclampsia, Susan McIntyre felt a wave of relief when her baby boy was safely delivered.
Yet, when newborn Connor was placed in her arms on August 6, 1997, the doctor broke the news he’d been born without a left hand.
“I asked the doctor why it had happened, and he said maybe the baby had been sitting wrong in the womb,” says Susan, now 56, from Corby, Northamptonshire.
“The strangest thing is, I was in hospital for a long time [before giving birth], and I saw lots of other mums, and some of them had babies that also had issues with their limbs. Then I had a baby with the exact same thing. I did think that was strange.”
In a town like Corby, with a population of around 60,000, you would expect to see just one such birth every three or four years – but a total of 19 babies were born with limb differences during the period 1989-1998.
These, it would later transpire, had been caused by toxic dust emissions from a former steelworks, in what was the biggest case of foetal poisoning since the morning-sickness drug thalidomide in the 1950s and 1960s – and one of the UK’s biggest environmental disasters.
New Netflix drama, Toxic Town, starring Doctor Who and Broadchurch actress Jodie Whittaker as Susan, tells the extraordinary story of the group of Corby mums who waged a landmark 10-year legal battle against Corby Borough Council, eventually becoming the first people in the world to prove the link between airborne poison and damage to foetuses.
Susan already had a three-year-old son, Daniel, when Connor was born. Under the strain of having a disabled child, her marriage to the children’s father Peter, a factory worker, ended when Connor was eight months old.
In the months following his birth, they were in and out of hospital for corrective surgery on his hand, and she came across another baby from Kettering with similar limb differences.
She says: “You question yourself and wonder if you did anything wrong in your pregnancy. You know you haven’t, but that’s just a process of dealing with it all. It was a very dark time.”
When Connor was 18 months old, Susan had a life-changing knock at the door.
“It was a journalist and he said to me: ‘This could be a big problem in Corby. We think there’s some sort of damage that’s causing this to your babies.’ Nobody knew what it was, just that there were a lot of babies that had this.”
The Sunday Times journalist Graham Hind believed the abundance of limb differences in such a short period could be linked to the reclamation of a former steelworks in the town, which had closed down in 1980, but was regenerated by the council between 1984 and 1999 to create shops, parks and businesses.
“I didn’t want to get involved at first because I was scared,” says Susan. “We were like little people, and we were frightened to say anything because we didn’t know what would happen if we went up against the council.
We were frightened to say anything, as we didn’t know what would happen if we went up against the council.
“You didn’t want to lose your house and everything you’d worked hard for and got in life. We thought it was best to be quiet and toe the line.”
She did eventually contribute to Graham’s article published in The Sunday Times on April 11, 1999, and was subsequently contacted by solicitor Des Collins, who offered to represent the mums in launching a legal battle against Corby Borough Council.
A second mother, Tracey Taylor, had worked in an office on an industrial estate close to the steelworks while she was pregnant with her first child, and had no idea that the thick dust that regularly covered her car was toxic.
Her baby, Shelby, died just three days after her birth on April 19, 1996. Tracey, now 53, who lives in Kettering, says: “It was like the Sahara Desert had done a great big whoosh over.
“You could clean your desk, and by the time you picked your coffee cup up, it was thick with dust again. We wouldn’t even go out at dinner time, because it would burn the back of your throat. It was awful, but you didn’t realise you were drinking and breathing toxic waste.”
A third mother, Maggie Mahon, joined the cause after reading about it in the newspaper.
Her husband Derek worked at the reclamation site and she recalls beating dust from his clothes every evening when he came home while she was pregnant. Their son Sam was born with a club foot on July 10, 1997, and endured years of operations to correct it.
Mum-of-two Maggie, now 53 and a teaching assistant from Corby, says: “The doctors put Sam’s foot in a splint when he was a week old, and he’d go into hospital every so often and they’d stretch it.
“Later on, he had a pair of little boots he had to wear for six months. The first day they put his boots on, the doctors said: ‘He’s going to hate this, but don’t take it off whatever you do.’ That night, he was crying and crying. Derek came in from work one day, and I said: ‘Read this article – you worked among all this, and Sam’s got a club foot – that’s a bit coincidental, isn’t it?’”
As solicitor Des worked tirelessly to gather information for the court case, the mums made the best of their lives.
Susan taught herself how to get by with one hand so she could pass on those skills to Connor. “I used to watch one of the older children riding a bike and I’d say: ‘Wow, I wonder if Connor will ever do that?’ and the child’s mum said: ‘We’ll make sure he does.’ She made me put a hand behind my back while I did my laces, so I could work out how Connor would do it. It was hard, but we did it all together.”
Dozens of mothers joined forces to pool their stories and 18 of the strongest cases were put forward as claimants, including Susan and Maggie, with a 19th being added later.
Sadly, the decision was taken by Des to exclude Tracey as a claimant – because her little girl Shelby did not survive, and she had problems with her organs and ear rather than a limb difference, it was thought her story might weaken the overall case.
BREAKTHROUGH MOMENT
Tracey says: “When we were dropped as a case, it was upsetting. But if it wasn’t for Des, none of this would have come to court.”
A breakthrough moment came in 2000, when Des was able to prove a 2.7 times higher rate of limb difference in Corby than the rest of Kettering Health Authority – a fact the council got wrong in a report.
After extensive research, he also realised the toxins were being spread over a five-mile radius through dust from the steelworks site, which the mothers had unwittingly inhaled.
The full trial took place at the High Court in 2009, 10 years after Des and the mothers first made contact. Corby Borough Council denied negligence, but an internal report had already raised the prospect of residents being exposed to high levels of zinc, arsenic, boron and nickel as a result of the reclamation works.
A separate report from the council’s auditor complained of incompetence and negligence by the council and said that there was a “cavalier approach” to the operation. Despite not being part of the claim, Tracey bravely gave evidence, appearing as a crucial witness as she worked so close to the dusty site.
“I did it to help the other children,” she says.
During the trial, the court heard the council in charge of the regeneration had been under pressure to prevent the town from sinking economically after 11,000 steel workers lost their jobs.
Subcontractors failed to put in proper health and safety measures, and the lorries they used to transport the toxic chemicals were not wheel washed or covered in tarpaulin as they should have been. Consequently, the town was covered in thick, red dust as lorries dragged waste through the streets.
The Netflix show’s executive producer Annabel Jones, whose idea it was to dramatise the story, explains: “This is not about some evil corporation trying to make a cheap buck. This was about trying to stop the town from going under.
“They knew they needed to move quickly to keep everyone employed. The problem was that they didn’t understand how dangerous this waste was. They set about this mammoth task of moving it through the town and, in doing so, awoke a monster.”
The group eventually won their case, with the judge finding the council liable for negligence, public nuisance and a breach of statutory duty.
The council continued to deny culpable liability, but settled the case and awarded the mothers £14.6million with an apology. Nobody has ever faced criminal proceedings.
The result was thanks to the indefatigable work by Des and the mothers – who refused to give up their fight, despite the fact many of them had family links to the site who feared losing their jobs.
People need to be held accountable, otherwise when is it ever going to stop?
Susan says: “The more I found out, the more I wanted to fight. I thought if I was the only one that was going to open my mouth, I’d do it. I stopped caring what might happen if I did. All we wanted to know was: ‘Why did this happen to us? How do we stop it happening to anyone else?’
“All Connor wanted was to lead a little boy’s life, and he never got it, because he had operations until he was nine, then the court case until he was 13. The verdict was brilliant, but up until then, bad, bad things happened in his little life.”
Although the poisonings came to light because unborn babies were affected by the toxins, it’s thought likely that adults were also poisoned and their symptoms were slower to present themselves.
It’s doubtful we’ll ever know the true scale of the scandal, though the mums say many Corby residents have suffered ill health, including cancer and asthma.
“Even post-Covid, I don’t think people question air quality as much as they should,” says Annabel.
“While resources are stretched at the moment, we still have to protect people.
“I’m really proud that the mothers involved in the Corby case were the first people in the world to prove a link between airborne toxins and damage to unborn babies. I don’t think the impact of that landmark case has been felt enough yet.”
The mothers have stayed in touch since the case, becoming close friends. Tracey went on to have twins Brandon and Callum, now 27, and son Dominic, 22.
Maggie says: “I don’t think anybody set out to cause birth defects. I think their selfishness took over. People need to be held accountable, otherwise when is it ever going to stop? What’s going to put people off taking risks like that?”
- Watch Toxic Town on Netflix from February 27.