How far will the Cyanide spread?

THE apparent sodium cyanide spill in Walsall is a very serious matter but is it going to be contained there? Writes John Coxon.

Not wishing to be alarmist but should not all waterways users south of the Pennines be concerned?

Not so obvious

It's not always so obvious that someone has been poisoned by some form of cyanide either as according to Wikipedia although acute, or short term exposure requires a fairly high dose to be a problem, chronic, or long term exposure can result in weakness and a variety of symptoms, including permanent paralysis, nervous lesions, hyperthyroidism and miscarriages. Other effects include mild liver and kidney damage. It doesn't necessarily kill instantly despite what the movies might suggest.

Why should we all be concerned? Well, the Walsall canals are about as high as canals get. Various routes descend from there and all the water in them will flow down until it eventually reaches a river and then out to sea.

Canals are not still water lakes, they flow at various rates, that is why by-weirs are installed. They allow this flow to continue downstream in a controlled manner thus preventing it flooding the surrounding areas.

To take one route, some of the water from the summit pounds in Walsall flows along the Tame Valley canal and down through the by-weirs of the Perry Bar flight to join the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal at Salford junction.

Then continues

It then continues along the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal going down the Curdworth Flight to Whittington until eventually, via the Coventry, joining the Trent & Mersey at Fradley. It then flows eastwards to reach Alrewas at which point it will flow into the River Trent and thence to the sea!

There are other routes that flow out of the section of the Birmingham Canal Network (BCN) at Walsall which could take the flow to the rivers Soar, Nene, Thames, Avon and Seven. These may be very long complex routes but the water will eventually flow out to sea via a river somewhere. We need to determine, will they all be monitored along their whole length? If so, for how long?

How safe are all the users of the waterways going to be from this spill? It's not only boaters but workers, swimmers, canoeists, anglers even duck feeding children etc. In fact it could affect anyone who gets any part of their body wet with canal water. Remember, it's long term exposure we need to prevent here. If a dog goes into the water, it will not only affect the dog but anyone who touches the dog afterwards or even gets wet from the dog shaking itself dry!

Will monitoring be effective?

Is the monitoring going to be effective and wide-spread enough to guarantee the safety of all canal users across the whole network? Is the monitoring going to be carried on until there is no possibility of any of this material being a danger to anyone any more?

How will we know? Can we believe what we are being told? Will the monitoring be stopped because of financial or man-power reasons before it should be to maintain safety? Will it be widespread enough to be effective? What will happen if some of this material is found outside their so-called containment area?

Not wanting to be accused of scaremongering but what provision is there in force to treat anyone affected? What provision is there for isolating or cleaning any contaminated person, animal, object etc? What about those who have already come into contact with the contaminated person before they fell ill? Is this going to be made public so we know?

Not much use

As far as I have been able to ascertain, nothing has been made public on this apart from telling people to dial the 111 NHS helpline if they feel ill! Not much use as far as my previous experience goes with that helpline for either information or help!

Let us hope that we canal users will be treated with respect and that monitoring will be effective enough, and last long enough, to ensure the safety of all who use the canals!