An anti-incinerator campaigner says he has uncovered further evidence which suggests the controversial Newhaven plant could lead to a sharp rise in infant mortality and birth defects.

Researcher Michael Ryan has collated figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and primary care trusts, data on birth defects and infant mortality to ascertain where the highest incidences were taking place.

Shropshire-based Mr Ryan concluded that those families living near incinerators had suffered disproportionately high levels of both.

Mr Ryan's claims follow yesterday's story on the Newhaven incinerator in The Argus. Retired GP Dr Dick van Steenis claimed the plant could create a "fall-out zone" which could shorten people's lives by up to 12 years.

Mr Ryan said: "I'm appalled birth defect data has been collected on government instruction since January 1964, yet nobody appears to have analysed it to identify avoidable environmental causes.

"The figures prove wards in which people live downwind of incinerators have much higher infant mortality rates, regardless of other social impacts such as poverty levels.

"It's as though teams of civil servants at ONS and the Department of Health have been asleep on the job for more than 40 years. It's a worse public health scandal than the thalidomide one that led to the collection of birth defect data in the first place."

Figures obtained by Mr Ryan showed one in every 16 babies born in rural mid Devon in 2002, an area with an incinerator, had at least one defect.

This compared with fewer than one in 630 babies born in London's traffic-clogged Islington during the same year.

Meanwhile, Enfield in north London has Britain's largest incinerator at Edmonton. The death rate for babies up to one year old in the west of the borough is virtually nil.

But in eastern Enfield, which sits downwind of the incinerator and is exposed to smoke from the chimney, the death rate is between 10 and 12 per thousand.

The national average death rate for babies up to a year old is 5.2 per thousand.

Mr Ryan said the most damaging emissions, tiny harmful particles known as PM 2.5s, are not measured by the authorities.

He added that while incinerator filters take out 99 per cent of particles, it is the ultra fine one per cent, the PM 2.5s, that can have chronic effects on health.

East Sussex County Council approved plans for the incinerator earlier this year. The Government decided not to call in the application, despite protesters fighting a long-running campaign that led to almost 15,000 written objections. It is due to open in 2010.

In The Argus yesterday, Dr Steenis argued tens of thousands of people living in a 15- mile radius of the incinerator would suffer, including those in Brighton and Hove, Lewes and Eastbourne.

Veolia Environmental Services, the company behind the incinerator, said his comments were at odds with the findings of the Health Protection Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

A spokesman said: "We would like to assure people the proposed energy recovery facility in Newhaven, which will generate electricity from black bag' household waste, that otherwise would be landfilled, is safe. The Environment Agency has granted the facility a pollution prevention and control permit and stated this facility does not cause a threat to the environment or human health'."

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