Minton report: Carter-Ruck give up bid to keep Trafigura study secret

I thought this would be the best place for this story, although it's dominated Twitter this week before Jan Moir wrote her idiotic piece in the Daily Mail

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/16/carter-ruck-abandon-minton-injunction

Lawyers for oil traders Trafigura finally abandoned attempts to keep secret a scientific report about toxic waste dumping in west Africa, that was shown to the Guardian.

Just after 7.30pm Carter-Ruck, libel lawyers for Trafigura, wrote a letter to the Guardian which said the newspaper should regard itself as "released forthwith" from any reporting restrictions. An MP revealed the report's existence to parliament this week, after the Guardian was hit with a "super-injunction" banning all mention of it and other UK media were then subsequently notified of, and therefore bound by it.

The Minton report, commissioned in 2006 from the London-based firm's scientific consultants, said that based on the "limited" information they had been given Trafigura's oil waste, dumped cheaply the month before in a city in Ivory Coast, was potentially toxic, and "capable of causing severe human health effects".

The study said early reports of large scale medical problems among the inhabitants of Abidjan, were consistent with a release of a cloud of potentially lethal hydrogen sulphide gas over the city. The effects could have included severe burns to the skin and lungs, eye damage, permanent ulceration, coma and death.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2009/10/16/mintonreport.pdf

here.

There's a large contingent in this forum who couldn't care less.

Still, this is a good note. Recommended.

Which backfired spectacularly all over twitter.

But I have no experience either with Twitter and I have refused to have a mobile internet device.

What can anyone expect in an "intellectual" environment where half-lives mean "forever" and eternal poisons are too mundane to capture the attention of the crusade?

--d!

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The below thread is a good starting point as to why. It's not so much the enviromental issues that got people riled as the attempted assault on the right of the press to report what's going on in Parliament.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=191x28287

the Guardian, but the who, what and why were masked. This makes all clear. Excellent find.