§ Mr. Charles Kennedyasked the Secretary of State for Defence (1) if he will make a statement on the effectiveness of the decontamination exercise on Gruinard Island;
(2) what experiments are being, or have recently been, carried out on Gruinard Island using tissue to culture anthrax spores to test the effectiveness of the decontamination exercise; and if he will give details of any such experiments;
(3) if he will give details of the results of experiments carried out to test the effectiveness of the decontamination of Gruinard Island;
(4) what experiments at Porton Down have been carried out using cultured anthrax spores from Gruinard Island.
§ Mr. Archie HamiltonI refer the hon. Member to the answer that I gave him on 4 November at column427.
Studies of the soil samples taken from Gruinard Island in October are still in progress. We will announce the outcome of these studies and the effectiveness of the decontamination exercise when all the tests recommended by the independent advisory group have been completed.
All experiments on soil samples taken from Gruinard Island both now and in the past, have been intended to determine the level and extent of anthrax contamination, if any. The principal technique uses a nutrient gel culture to assess the number of spores in a given sample and avoids the use of large numbers of laboratory animals. However, results obtained by this method will be confirmed by a small number of in vivo tests using about 50 guinea pigs in total. Reports of this work will be published in scientific journals in due course.