TWO areas in Labour's North-East heartland are bearing the brunt of Britain's pollution problems, according to environmental campaigners.

Friends of the Earth has produced a list of communities it claims are having to cope with the majority of the country's pollution.

Research by the environmental group shows that two thirds of all cancer causing chemicals released into the area every year, come from factories in ten per cent of the most deprived communities in England.

Included in these communities are labour-led Redcar and Stockton North.

Friends of the Earth is today calling on the Labour party to include a reduction in toxic pollution in its election manifesto with an 80 per cent cut promised by 2006.

Mike Childs, campaigns director at Friends of the Earth, said: "People in the poorest parts of the country are being bombarded by cancer-causing pollution. These people vote Labour, but Labour is letting them down."

Neither Mo Mowlam, MP for Redcar, nor Frank Cook, MP for Stockton North, were available for comment yesterday.

But a report last year by Stockton, Middlesbrough, Darlington, Hartlepool, and Redcar and Cleveland councils concluded that pollution was not a major problem in the region.

The councils joined forces to assess whether national objectives could be met, over the next five years, in areas where the public may be exposed to pollution.

They found that most parts of the Tees Valley already met Government air quality objectives, meant to be achieved by 2005, and more improvements were expected.

Following the Friends of the Earth report, published today, a spokesman for the Department of the Environment said: "All local authorities have assessed their areas and where they don't think they can meet air quality strategy objectives, by 2005, they will the designate a quality management area and produce an action plan, setting up the measures they intend to take, in pursuit of air quality objectives."

The Environment Agency is also putting pressure on industries to reduce pollution.