IT IS just as well that Jonathan O’Neill and anti-incinerator campaigners in Ardley are not the decision makers who may choose where, if at all, a waste incinerator is located in Oxfordshire.

In Ardley, they consider it okay to put one alongside a power station. Clearly they have not done their research.

All acknowledge that new waste incinerators emit pollution. However, the majority of new particles created are, as yet, unidentified. Therefore so are their effects.

Supporters of waste incineration fudge this issue by claiming pollution amounts are small, neglecting that statistics are averaged out across the country.

Recent research has created a very different picture.

It has indicated the higher than average amount of pollution around incinerators, and the probable effects on health and life expectancy. It is also beginning to demonstrate the unsafe nature of combinations of pollutants when incinerators are put alongside power stations and refineries.

The spread of power station pollution is often visible around Didcot, so locals have a good idea of where incinerator pollution would fall too, as it is brought down by power station particles.

Farmland, gardens, and towns within a radius of 17-miles would probably be immediately contaminated, along with the Thames.

Mr O’Neill represents opinions from outside that 17 mile radius. Presumably he and his co-campaigners have no need for food produced in south Oxfordshire and perhaps do not drink water provided by Thames Water.

Perhaps they don’t visit the areas of outstanding natural beauty currently blighted by Didcot A Power Station’s stack, and, therefore, couldn’t give two figs if it is replaced by an incinerator chimney.

However, folk in Sutton Courtenay and the surrounding area will continue to campaign against an incinerator anywhere in Oxfordshire – and beyond – until such antisocial, uneconomic and undemocratic proposals are withdrawn.

Dr Pauline Amos-Wilson, Milton Road, Sutton Courtenay