A DOZEN campaigners have been demonstrating their concerns about Teesside's environmental record.

According to Friends of the Earth organiser Iris Ryder, Hartlepool and its surroundings are "overloaded with toxins".

She and her fellow banner-carrying protestors chose to hold their weekend demonstration next to Hartlepool's war memorial.

She said: "This site commemorates the deaths of hundreds of men from Hartlepool who died in the War. However, there will still be people dying unnecessarily in Hartlepool - but now as a result of the toxins being dumped in our environment. These provide enormous corporate profits at the expense of our health."

She said three out of ten landfill sites planned by the Government will be on Teesside. Plans to burn tallow at Wilton, to bury chemical waste in brine caverns at Seal Sands and to break up mothballed toxin-contaminated US military support ships at Hartlepool are all additional concerns.

The town and the area, she said, has had enough and that means no further expansion of what is already Western Europe's biggest chemical complex on Teesside.

"It must not be jobs at any cost," she said, attributing the poor turnout for the demonstration to the fog."