nitens plantations not toxic, page-8

Premier of Tasmania has released the following to the media:

"The Premier, David Bartlett, has today written to the ABC asking for a correction to the Australian Story reports on the drinking water at St Helens, and to apologise to the people of the town.

The scientific study commissioned by the Government has found that the report by Australian Story was wrong, Mr Bartlett said.

It has now been shown the Australian Story episodes were based on seriously flawed scientific methods, that distorted the results by a factor of 1400.

These two episodes of Australian Story caused fear and distress in the St Helens community, and damaged the towns tourist reputation throughout Australia.

It alleged that toxins for eucalypt plantations in the St George River catchment posed a potential health risk to the towns water supply, might have been linked to abnormally high rates of cancer, and to have adversely affected oyster growers, Mr Bartlett said.

All of these things have been shown to be wrong by the study of national scientific experts.

The water is safe to drink, there is no cancer cluster and there is no adverse effect on oysters.

Indeed the river was found to be in near pristine condition.

Yet this poorly researched and alarmist program is still available on the ABC website.

I have asked the ABC to remove the program from the website and if that is not possible to add a disclaimer to the effect that the information on which it was based has been shown to be wrong and to direct viewers to the website of the scientific report.

In addition, I have asked the ABC at the end of one of its current series of Australian Story episodes to explain to viewers that the St Helens water story was based on wrong information, and to apologise to the people of St Helens for the distress that it caused, Mr Bartlett said."