The Independent and Greenpeace have uncovered mountains of abandoned waste and claims that workers at the Thule base in northern Greenland became ill after a B-52 crashed with four hydrogen bombs on board in 1968.

There is evidence, too, of environmental pollution on a grand scale at other disused US bases in Greenland: at Marraq, where a Greenpeace team found tens of thousands of rotting barrels, and at Kulusuk on the east coast, where huge quantities of industrial scrap have been left to rust.

Thule is one of a number of forward radar bases that will be needed if President Bush's ballistic missile defense shield is to be effective. All but Thule and Fylingdales are in territory controlled by America. To use these two bases, the US must first obtain permission from the UK and Denmark, which governs Greenland, but opposition to the plans is mounting in both countries.

This week, The Independent revealed how 150 Inuit people were forcibly moved from their homes in 1953 to make way for the Thule surface-to-air missiles and how a legal challenge to reclaim their land will be heard by the Supreme Court in Denmark in autumn next year.

In the meantime, the primary concern of the Inuit, who were moved more than 100 miles (160km) north of their sacred hunting grounds on the Dundas peninsula, next to the Thule base, is that if they are given the right to return, their land will be toxic. "I am worried that the nuclear pollution might endanger all living species," said Vittus Qujaakitsoq, secretary to the Minister for Industry in Greenland and a prospective Social Democrat candidate for the Danish parliament. "We have been finding deformed animals in the area, mainly seals with no fur, and deformities of the entrails, guts and organs. These are the animals the people must hunt, so we want to know for sure whether the area is safe."

Mr Qujaakitsoq said Greenlanders had been given assurances the area was safe after the B-52 crash, in which between 500g (1lb) and 1.8kg (4lb) of plutonium went missing in the waters of Bylot Sound, but they had been given no hard evidence.

Among allegations made to The Independent by a number of sources are that:

• A whole H-bomb – serial number 78252 – was lost in the January 1968 crash.

• The amount of plutonium involved was higher than that admitted by the US – up to 12kg.

• Barrels filled with contaminated ice and snow after the crash were removed to America – but some were allowed to thaw in the spring and leaked into local soil.

• Toxic sump oil was used on roads "to keep dust levels down in summer".

Some of the claims are impossible to evaluate because of a refusal by the US and Danish governments to reveal details of US environmental impact reports totaling about 4,000 pages. As recently as two weeks ago, an attempt by a Greenpeace toxics campaigner, Jacob Hartmann, to gain access to a key US report, The Thule Environmental Survey, was rejected by the Danish Foreign Ministry, which said the US authorities were "resisting publication".

It is clear, however, that the Danish Environment Ministry is not happy with the American findings. On 9 June, it asked the Danish Finance Ministry for £400,000 to commission its own report, saying US surface-to-air missile silos had been filled with waste and concreted over, and alleging that the American report had concentrated on one dump only, ignoring a second dump, landfill sites and the impact of waste on groundwater and marine life.

One former worker at the base, John Pederson, told The Independent: "We used to just push waste out over the edge [into the sea]. Other workers told me they had seen radioactive waste from the B-52 crash allowed to thaw in the summer and just leak into the ground. I wanted to speak out because I am worried about the Eskimos [sic]. They eat the animals that live in the water round here."

Asked whether he had ever seen how chemicals were disposed of, he said no, but added: "All the waste oil was put on the roads because they got very dusty in the summer."

After the 1968 crash, some of the 1,000-plus employees who helped in the clean-up established the Thule Workers' Association when they found the incidence of cancer among their number was higher than the Danish national average.

"Mostly, the Danish workers were driving vehicles and forklift trucks containing contaminated snow, ice and equipment blown up in the crash," said Jens Zinglersen, the association chairman. "Today, you would see people in some kind of space suit doing that. In those days, there was no such protection, not even masks, so radioactive material was simply breathed in."

The workers have been given small sums of compensation, but the Danish government has not admitted that the workers' illnesses – which Mr Zinglersen says includes "strange skin cancers" – were caused by radiation. He said after the crash: "Snow and ice was scraped up but the rest of the ice that remained there was covered in heavy carbonate sand, which sank to the bottom of the sea when the ice melted in the spring. And, in the fire, a lot of equipment melted into the ice – that all sank too."

Mr Zinglersen said he was more critical of the Danish government than the American authorities. "At least the Americans have provided us with thousands of pages of evidence," he said. "From this, we believe one bomb has never been found and is now on the bottom of the sea. They have found a bit of the casing, but not all the stages. We believe, from the evidence, that the missile was marked MK 28 and had the serial number 78252."

In 1997, a sampling expedition conducted by a Greenland Home Rule ship, the Adolf Jensen, found that "hot particles are still present after 29 years: high anomalies signifying hot particles have been identified not only in the 10-15cm [4in-6in] peak layer, but also in the upper biota-reworked sediment layer".

When asked by The Independent why the Thule survey was being kept secret, Ole Samsing, head of N7, the Danish government department that represents Greenland's foreign interests, said: "Because the owner of the report does not want it to be released by a third party."

Asked who the "owner" was, Mr Samsing replied: "The US government." He said it was considered sensitive during relations between the two governments over the return of a small part of the base – the table-top Dundas mountain and peninsula – which is symbolic to the Inuit but relatively useless in practical terms.

Mr Samsing said no surveys had been conducted by the Danish government since the Eighties. But three Greenpeace activists who broke into the base this week, Vincent Custers, Olivier Devaux and Lawrence Turk, said they saw evidence of waste, including a number of oil and chemical drums abandoned in a river.

The US Air Force said that it was unable to comment on The Independent's findings at short notice.

© 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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