NEW FACTUAL
Poison Water
Wednesday, 9pm, BBC2
On the morning of 7 July 1988, Doug Cross boiled the kettle at his home in Camelford, Cornwall, only for the hot water to curdle bizarrely. Later, when his wife Carole ran a bath, the water turned blue.
Yet despite thousands of complaints, including dizziness, vomiting, diarrhoea, blistered skin and mouth ulcers, the then South West Water Authority insisted the water was safe to drink, even advising people to mix it with orange juice to make it more palatable.
In fact, unknown to 20,000 residents of North Cornwall, they’d been affected by the UK’s worst mass poisoning after 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate had been accidentally added to the water supply in a devastating mixup at the local treatment facility.
‘I remember going…
