Water poison inquest back next year

A coroner will continue the hearing into Carole Cross’s death on March 5 in Taunton – more than 12 months after it was adjourned.

Around 20,000 customers were affected when a relief lorry driver mistakenly added 20,000 tonnes of aluminium sulphate to drinking water at the Lowermoor treatment works, near Camelford, north Cornwall in 1988.

The inquest originally started in November last year and heard how the South West Water Authority, which ran the treatment works, did not tell the public the cause of the poisoning for three weeks, and insisted the water was safe to drink.

Many people reported rashes, diarrhoea, mouth ulcers and other health problems after drinking or bathing in the water.

The water became so polluted in the first few hours that customers reported hairs sticking to their body like superglue as they got out of the bath.

Customers flooded the switchboard of the South West Water Authority but were told the water was safe to drink and some were even advised to boil it, which increased the levels of aluminium still further.

Mrs Cross, who lived on the outskirts of the town and later moved to Dulverton in Devon, was 59 when she died at Taunton’s Musgrove Park Hospital in 2004.

She suffered from a rare neurological disease – cerebral amyloid angiopathy – usually associated with Alzheimer’s and an “abnormally high level of aluminium” was later found in her brain.

Her husband, Dr Doug Cross, believes her exposure to high levels of aluminium during the incident caused her death 16 years later.