Living near a fuel station may quadruple the risk of acute leukaemia in children, research published yesterday showed.

French scientists who carried out a study of more than 500 infants found that a child whose home was near a fuel station or vehicle-repair garage was four times as likely to develop leukaemia as a child whose home was further away.

And the longer a child had lived nearby, the higher the risk of leukaemia seemed to be, showed the research, published in the Occupational and Environmental Medicine journal.

The prevalence of childhood leukaemia is four in every 100 000 children, but it is the most common type of childhood cancer in developed countries, say the researchers.

Few clear risk factors have been identified for the childhood variant, but exposure to benzene in the workplace has been identified as a possible factor in leukaemia in adults, the authors say.

The risk appeared to be even greater for acute non-lymphoblastic leukaemia, which was seven times more common among children living close to a fuel station or commercial garage, the research showed.