News that living close to a toxic waste dump may increase the risk of babies being born with birth defects has been greeted with alarm in Oxfordshire.

Research published this week shows women who live within 3km of a toxic dump are more likely to give birth to babies with a deformity or an illness such as spina bifida.

The findings were based on a study of mothers and children who lived near 21 landfill sites in Europe.

There are eight sites in Oxfordshire which are licensed to take wastes which "present difficulty in handling". They are:

SUTTON WICK, Sutton Courtenay, owned by JC Waste Ltd

ARDLEY FIELDS Farm Quarry, near Bicester, owned by Blue Circle Industries plc

SLAPE HILL QUARRY at Glympton, owned by Smith and Son (Bletchingdon) Ltd

DIX PIT at Linch Hill, Stanton Harcourt, owned by ARC Southern

OAKLEY WOOD, Benson, owned by Oxfordshire Waste Ltd

ALKERTON QUARRY, Banbury, owned by BFI Ltd

EWELME NO 2 QUARRY, near Wallingford, owned by Grundon (Waste) Ltd GRAVEL WORKING next to the River Thames at Radley, owned by National Power plc.

Any of these dumps could be handling rubbish such as pesticides, heavy metals including lead and mercury, and industrial solvents.

Four of them - Alkerton, Ardley, Dix Pit and Sutton Courtenay - are used for domestic waste tipping by Oxfordshire County Council. People in Stanton Harcourt were dismayed to discover that Dix Pit, their local landfill, was named in a list of 463 toxic dumps produced by environmental consultants Aspinwall for Friends of the Earth. John Harcourt, chairman of the parish council, told the Oxford Mail: "We weren't aware toxic waste might be there. We shall be writing to the county council asking for assurances.

"There had been concern about methane escape, which was dealt with quite competently, and the usual problems with flies and smells."

Health professionals warned that the latest study had not established a direct link between living near a hazardous waste dump and congenital birth defects.

Dr Dick Mayon-White, public health consultant for Oxfordshire, said: "Women living within 3km of a landfill site seemed to have a slightly higher rate of congenital abnormalities but there is no explanation as to why that should be.

"In Oxfordshire, we've not identified a cluster of particular congenital abnormalities and certainly we haven't been aware of any clustering round landfill sites. "This justifies a lot more research to find an explanation."

Becky Jolly, waste projects officer for the county council, said waste of any description was potentially hazardous and there was no completely safe way to dispose of it.

"The way to reduce the dangers from waste is to reduce your waste," she said. She added that household rubbish, up to a third of which is organic, was potentially more dangerous than industrial waste because as it bio-degraded it gave off methane and a toxic liquid called leachate.

"The safest way at the moment is to make sure anything harmful which comes off is treated, but it's a debate in which things seem to go in and out of fashion," she added.

Environmental campaigners said no complete list existed of all toxic waste dumps in the UK. Mike Childs, of Friends of the Earth, blamed successive governments for poor regulation and supervision.

He claimed it was vital to carry out health studies around landfills, force industry to produce less waste, and introduce pollution inventories so people knew what was being dumped in their area.

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