A LEADING US scientist claims radiation from radar bases such as Fylingdales could pose a serious threat to health.

He made his claims as the controversy continued about the role of the North Yorkshire base in President Bush's new Star Wars defence system.

A similar base on Cape Cod on America's eastern seaboard is at the centre of a $5m investigation into an unexplained cluster of rare cancers.

Although there is no such cluster around Fylingdales, US Air Force scientist and researcher Dr Richard Albanese said he would never live in the area.

Interviewed by the BBC, he said that he feared radiation from such phased array radars could have carcinogenic properties science had yet to understand.

He told the Inside Out programme being broadcast tonight: "Technology seems to lead our medical understanding by somewhere between ten and 20 years.

"With asbestos, there was a 30 to 40 year delay and I think now it is the wireless systems."

Dr Albanese was a member of the medical team that first identified Agent Orange - a defoliant used during the Vietnam War - as the cause of unexplained cancers in American veterans.

He is now running the Cape Cod tests, which were ordered after local medical experts identified raised levels of breast and lung cancer in young women near the Sagamore base, 70 miles from Boston.

There is no evidence of a cancer cluster in the Fylingdales area and emissions from the base are known to be within existing legal limits.

But local campaigner Jackie Fearnley said she was shocked by the revelations from the US, which come only months after the MoD reassured local people that the British base was safe.

Mrs Fearnley, who lives in Goathland, said: "My husband and I have talked seriously about whether we go on living in such a place.

"We've see the way America decides policy purely to suit themselves and we are not necessarily going to be in very much control or given much information so we really must ask: is this the right thing for us?"

Dr Albanese expresses his fears on Inside Out on BBC One tonight, at 7.30pm.