SIR – Bradford Council are aware of my concern over the infant mortality issue following my FoI request for infant death rates at electoral ward level.
Older readers seeing the birth defects article (T&A, September 8) might remember the thalidomide scandal, when the link between that drug and terrible birth defects was initially denied by the medical establishment and the manufacturer.
That scandal prompted the Chief Medical Officer at the Ministry of Health to announce the start of collection of birth defect data in The Times (January 6 1964) “as a means of providing early information of causal factors of congenital malformation”.
During the last 50 years, no effort has been made to break the link between air pollution and infant mortality despite it being known that air pollution is a major cause of birth defects and deaths in infancy since at least 1917 following Dr William Brend’s scrutiny of the 1914 infant mortality rates for all parts of the British Isles.
Michael Ryan, Gains Avenue, Bicton Heath, Shrewsbury
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