The IAQM Early Careers Network (ECN) provides a forum for Early Career Professionals to learn, practice skills and network, in a friendly, supportive and accessible environment.

Join us for the next meet-up to hear an update on upcoming activities and engage in discussion with your peers on a landmark case study, the Corby poisonings. You will also have the opportunity to raise ideas for what you would like to see in future IAQM ECN activities. 

Acting on feedback from previous meet-ups, this event will be interactive and discursive, giving you time to connect with fellow early career air quality professionals through facilitated breakout discussions.

The Corby poisonings 

Join us to discuss a landmark high court case that has made legal history in the UK with proven links between airborne toxins and foetal development damage. “Toxic Town: The Corby Poisonings” directed by Niamh Kennedy, Raw TV provides an overview of the case and we recommend watching before you attend. 

Set in post-industrial Corby, in the 1990s, a group of ordinary mothers took on the local council and won a court case described as Britain’s worst foetal poisoning scandal since thalidomide.

In 1980, Corby Borough Council embarked on the biggest land reclamation project in Europe - redeveloping a steelworks site. The toxic particles from the reclamation project were ingested by the mothers and poisoned their unborn children.

We will discuss this historically significant case study and find out what implications the landmark court decision has had on other council reclamation programmes in England and Wales.