A BLACKPOOL MP is backing Greenpeace's call for a ban on radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea.

Blackpool North and Fleetwood MP Joan Humble said: "We want safe bathing waters and we want to eat Morecambe Bay shellfish and feel safe doing so."

Greenpeace this week called on the Government to join other European countries in banning nuclear discharges into the sea.

The environmental group, currently testing radiation levels near British Nuclear Fuels' Sellafield plant in Cumbria, claims Irish Sea lobsters were 42 times over EU radiation limits for food after a nuclear accident.

Their researcher, Dr Helen Wallace, said: "Contamination spreads throughout the Irish Sea and into the food chain. Basically there is no safe dose of radiation."

Said Mrs Humble: "There are many concerns over Irish Sea pollution, from ships' waste to sewage discharges - nuclear waste is adding to what is already an appalling problem.

"The Government needs to look at all sea-discharges because they affect not only the fish but the people who bathe off Blackpool and the Fylde Coast."

A BNFL spokesman responded: "It is nonsense for Greenpeace to suggest that the low-level discharges are turning the sea into a nuclear dustbin."

Independent monitoring had shown negligible impact on people, fish, shellfish, mud, vegetation or local produce, he added, and radioactive discharges were down to one per cent of peak 1970s levels.

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