Unwanted elongationThere’s a worrying trend on TV at the moment (yes, yet another worrying trend, I know…) but it’s potentially worrying, since it goes to the root of what a documentary is supposed to be and do.
Yesterday there was a BBC prog which purported to be a documentary on the infamous incident of the water poisoning in SW Cornwall in the ’80s.
In summary: “In July 1988.twenty tonnes of aluminium sulphate was inadvertently added to the water supply, raising the concentration to 3,000 times the permissible level. As the aluminium sulphate broke down it produced several tonnes of sulphuric acid which "stripped a cocktail of chemicals from the pipe networks as well as lead and copper piping in people's homes. Many people who came into contact with the contaminated water experienced a range of short-term health effects, and many victims suffered long-term effects whose implications remained unclear as of 2012. There has been no rigorous examination or monitoring of the health of the victims since the incident, which is Britain's worst mass poisoning event. Inquests on people who died many years later found very high levels of aluminium in the brain. Dame Barbara Clayton led a Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution enquiry into the incident.
The ‘documentary’ used the ‘talking heads’ approach, which contrived to waste a lot time. I can’t have been alone in wanting the main facts, yet it was easily 22 minutes until they were even broached.
For me, this is a dangerous trend, whereby essential information is withheld in the name of dramatic elevation. I accept that some may enjoy seeing ordinary folk amid degrees of upset and some film makers might believe that the ‘warts and all’ approach may have some value. But I seriously doubt it.
And although some local officials lost their jobs, the man whose actions directly concealed the facts, the chair of the water authority, Keith Court,
was never penalised. The tanker driver who had inadvertently filled the wrong port with what was effectively sulphuric acid was “instructed by Leslie Nicks, the head of operations,
not to tell the public”, despite the SWWA district manager, John Lewis, saying they had realised within 48 hours that aluminium sulphate was the likely cause of the contamination.
It seems that the ordinary person is left to be sacrificed when senior management gets it wrong, a
pattern repeated many, many times. And on this occasion, the “Official advice to boil the water before drinking was, according to Douglas Cross, a consultant biologist based in Camelford "dangerous advice because it concentrates the contaminants”.
This is a travesty; “Michael Waring at the Department of Health (DH) wrote to every doctor in Cornwall saying that, "although he had no detailed information on what was exactly in the water or how much people might have drunk,
he could assure them that no lasting ill effects would result."[27] G. K. Matthews, a senior toxicologist at the DH, suggested a team of medical experts should be sent to the area immediately, but a month later
said he had been "overruled”.This happened under Thatcher’s regime, as did the Post office scandal.
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