CASTLE Cement has been named among the worst polluters in the North West for releasing health-threatening dioxin gases into the air.

The Clitheroe works released 1,470mgs of dioxins in 1998, according to figures released by the Environment Agency in May.

But the company today stressed that meant just one-twentieth of an ounce for the whole year, and denied any link with bad health.

The environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth says the company's Ribblesdale site is 15th place in its list of the 25 biggest dioxin-releasing factories in the North West.

The news comes just three months after Environment Agency officers put a notice of enforcement on the company following complaints about persistent smells, and just three months after Friends of the Earth's Factory Watch campaign accused Clitheroe's ICI plant and Oswaldtwistle's Nipa Laboratories of putting cancer-causing fumes into the air.

The group is now campaigning for the Government to start publishing pollution inventories. Pollution campaigner Mike Childs said: "Levels have fallen over the last 10 years but these figures show how much further we have to go if people's health and the environment are to be protected. We want the Government to cut releases of hazardous substances by 80 per cent over the next five years and deliver their election promise to introduce comprehensive pollution inventories so people can see what other health-threatening pollution is being released into their neighbourhood."

Dioxins are by-products from combustion processes and the manufacture of chlorinated chemicals, and are suspected of causing reduced sperm counts, reduced fertility, genital malformations and learning difficulties.

The World Health Organisation recently reduced its recommended safe limit for daily dioxins intake although the Government has no strategy for reducing people's exposure to below that level.

Castle Cement's environment manager Iain Walpole said: "I would stress that we have not exceeded government emissions limits.

"The amount emitted was 1.47grams annually, which equates to around one twentieth of one ounce in all of our emissions to air from the works in a whole year.

"Our neighbours should be assured by the fact that there has never been any evidence to link ill health with cement manufacture throughout the many years our works have been in operation."

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