NEW ALLEGATIONS about the cancer risks from radioactive contamination of the Solway Firth are putting pressure on the cabinet secretary for health, Nicola Sturgeon, to release statistics kept secret by the NHS.

Campaigners claim that children living near the Dumfries and Galloway shoreline are twice as likely to contract leukaemia as those living further inland. They blame sea pollution from the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria and from the firing of depleted uranium shells at a military range near Kirkcudbright.

In scientific critiques passed to the Sunday Herald, Richard Bramhall from the Low Level Radiation Campaign and Chris Busby from Green Audit attack an NHS study from last year for missing the link. It failed to take account of the distorting effect of inland contamination from the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986, they say.

Though their findings are dismissed as "fundamentally flawed" by the NHS, other experts back the need for detailed cancer statistics to be released so that the dangers can be independently checked. The NHS in Scotland is making freedom of information history by appealing to the House of Lords in an attempt to keep such statistics under wraps.

The NHS was guilty of "outrageously bad epidemiology", alleged Bramhall. "To take the case to the House of Lords in a continued attempt to keep the information secret is a culpable waste of public money, a dereliction of their duty to public health and an insult to the suffering of the leukaemia children."

An NHS spokeswoman responded by pointing out that its study had been peer reviewed by experts, while Bramhall and Busby's critiques had not. "We would wish to take time to study their analysis before commenting further," she said. "However, preliminary assessment gives us the clear impression that the basis of their argument is fundamentally flawed."

According to John Urquhart, an independent epidemiologist from Newcastle, the suggestion that a Chernobyl effect had been overlooked may be legitimate. But he argued that the numbers of childhood leukaemia cases were so small that it was impossible to tell.

"To get a true picture we need to see all the cancer data put into the public domain so that it can be independently assessed," he said.

Childhood leukaemia statistics for every census ward in Dumfries and Galloway were first requested by the Scottish Green Party in January 2005. After they were withheld on the grounds that they could enable the identification of individual patients, the Greens appealed to the Scottish Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion.

Dunion ordered the release of the information, but was taken to the Court of Session in Edinburgh by the NHS. The NHS lost, so have now taken the unprecedented step of appealing to the House of Lords in London.

Since the election, the Green MSP Robin Harper has been urging Sturgeon to step in and order the release of the information. She has refused, however, urging the Greens to meet with the NHS to talk about what can be released.

"Doubts over the child cancer risks in southwest Scotland will only be removed when the NHS discloses the information that it has been ordered to disclose by the Scottish Information Commissioner and the Court of Session," said Harper.

"That why we've asked Nicola Sturgeon to intervene and order the NHS to stop wasting public money and release the information, and why we are repeating that request again."

The row over cancer risks and statistics coincides with the arrival of an anti-nuclear protest march in Kirkcudbright this week. Organised by Footprints For Peace, marchers left Dublin on May 13 in and aim to reach London by August 6.

"We have concerns about the seafood and fishing industry because of effects of enriched uranium which has fallen into the Solway," said local church minister Alistair Mackichan. "The march is illustrating the close links between the nuclear power industry and weapons."

But risks from the Kirkcudbright firing range were dismissed as "minimal" by its commandant, Nigel Davies. "All of the missile depleted uranium tips have been fired into three metres of mud in the Solway. The amount of radiation they give off is the same as a smoke alarm."