Campaigners from Kingsteignton have joined residents in pressing Devon County Council to decide which body should be responsible for monitoring dust from quarries. A series of questions to the authority has revealed that no statutory body has the explicit responsibility for monitoring levels of Respirable Crystalline Silica (RCS), a fine dust produced by cutting, crushing, drilling and moving rock.
The county council, which decides planning applications for quarries, can impose conditions requiring operators to monitor RCS. Residents who believe levels are causing health problems can report these to environmental health teams within district councils.
A motion put forward by Councillor Ed Hill, aimed at ensuring Devon establishes which statutory body is responsible for protecting residents outside mineral extraction sites from long-term exposure to RCS, has been passed.
It is understood that monitoring of dust takes place at the Denistone and Broadway Ball Clay sites in Kingsteignton, but the measurement focuses on the amount of dust rather than its composition. Councillor Hill said that was fundamental to his motion.
"I am not claiming that residents are being exposed to dangerous levels of RCS," he said. "Nobody should make that claim without the evidence; my concern is almost the opposite – where is the evidence that allows us to confidently rule it out?"
Separately, information secured by Newton Abbot MP Martin Wrigley showed that monitoring was undertaken at the Denistone and Broadway Ball Clay site at two locations: next to Preston village and Exeter Road in Kingsteignton. Mr Wrigley said the monitoring data he had seen "does not indicate dangerous levels of airborne particles and reports no risk to human health", but acknowledged that the monitoring does not specify the composition of the dust.
The MP added that Sibelco, which operates the quarries, had advised him it had strengthened dust control measures, including increased use of water bowsers to suppress dust and more intensive road sweeping. He said the company had committed to "improving communication with local residents through the publication of regular information and fact sheets".
At the full council meeting, Holland Risley, a member of the Save Our Trees campaign group, again raised issues residents claimed to be having as a result of their proximity to the Zitherixon quarry at Rackerhayes in Kingsteignton. He said: "My children cycle along Exeter Road to football and the swimming pool, and when the road is dry, passing lorries lift dust in a cloud, and there are other residents that live just metres away."
Mr Risley stated that even though planning permission for the quarry requires annual reporting of dust, he claimed the council had told him none had been submitted. He said: "Even the monitoring that does take place is built so it cannot see the problem. The operator has proposed monitoring by visual observation, but RCS is too fine to see."
Mr Risley added that ball clay consists of 30 per cent quartz, and that silica was a group one carcinogen, but that Devon had confirmed to him that "no quarry in Devon monitors it".
Council Under Pressure Over Quarry Dust Monitoring