“I have been unable to find any reports/studies into contamination of Hunter Valley milk by heavy metals. I spoke with an officer from DPI who confirmed this and also that, to her knowledge, there had been no monitoring of cattle in that area.”

There are Australian standards for heavy metals in milk, but it is unclear to what extent the milk is tested before heading to market.

If the fate of the village of Douglas is taken as a precedent, then you are correct in both your health concerns and in your economic concerns for your own village. Various community groups, doctors, organizations, and committed individuals in the US, the UK, and Australia are in the beginning stages of developing and deploying strategies to slow, mitigate, and halt the damaging effects of open-cast coal mines.

As I am not a political scientist, but rather a physical scientist, I cannot officially advise you on topics other than factual observations and science. As a concerned citizen of the world, I can however, give you my personal and unofficial opinion on how to proceed, and will do so via email.

At present I am crossing swords with a Norman Buchanan, a mining engineer from Tranent in the local paper the East Lothian Courier. He thinks we should all stop moaning about it and be grateful for the 50 or so jobs being brought to the area although most will be transferred from sites being closed. Ormiston Tynmount & Elphinstone, is downwind of the site, and our community is only 430 metres from the proposed site, it is my opinion our children will be poisoned by the dust, and our village ruined by the project.

I was totally unaware there was any opencast mining in Britain till this happened. The information I have found so far has convinced me opencast should be banned within a 3 mile radius of any community and I am amazed Nicola Sturgeon has not done anything to help. I suppose being the token woman in Alex’s cabinet will not give her much clout. I would be interested in contacting groups in any other area affected.

Autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and rheumatoid pneumoconiosis (results in large lesions on the lungs) have been correlated to exposure to crystalline silica (quartz dust) in ceramics workers and coal miners. To my knowledge, here have been no studies to date on whether communities adjacent coal mines have greater incidence of such autoimmune diseases.

Hope you can make it! The event will be filmed, posted online, and in DVD format, for international distribution.

Do you have an internet link to the 2004 negation? Many thanks if you could provide us with one, Nicholas has been investigating the various non-science aspects at Mainshill, including the planning violations and the jobs myth, etc.

There is the possibility of further planning applications in the near future, so obviously any information is of interest.

Please can you therefore keep me informed of developments, and anny further information that becomes available. Likewise, I will forward any information that i consider appropriate.

Finally, our experience has shown that with the change in Government policy in 2004 negating the “presumption aginst opencast mining”, that to counter any application, it must be shown that there are insufficient mitagation on the various pollutions regarding health and the environment.

Peter Steiner