Within 48 hours, South West Water Authority knew aluminium sulphate was the likely cause. They did not tell the public. For sixteen days the authority insisted the water was safe. One customer who phoned to complain about the taste was told there had been some acidity but the water was perfectly safe to drink, no more harmful than lemon juice. On 14 July the authority sent a circular letter to all customers asserting that the water from the treatment works was of the right alkalinity and safe to use and drink. Officials suggested mixing the water with orange juice to disguise the metallic taste. The driver who delivered the chemical was instructed by the authority not to mention it to anyone. The district manager later said he had been told by his superior not to inform the public. Not until 22 July did the authority's chairman authorise a public notice mentioning aluminium sulphate, and even then it was placed in the sports section of the Western Morning News. By that point, families had been drinking, bathing in, and cooking with poisoned water for over two weeks.

Douglas Cross, a consultant biologist living locally, ran his own tests and found that the water contained far more than aluminium sulphate. The acidic liquid leaving the treatment works had corroded copper pipes and their soldered joints in homes across the affected area, pulling zinc and lead into the supply. The contamination had been compounded by simple negligence: the chemical tank had not been cleaned for three years, despite a six-monthly cleaning requirement, leaving a build-up of sludge that magnified the problem. A month after the incident, the Department of Health wrote to every doctor in Cornwall to assure them that no lasting ill effects would result. The senior toxicologist who had suggested sending a medical team to Camelford immediately said later he had been overruled. Residents reported hair turning blue or green, skin blistering and peeling, urinary problems, joint pains, and persistent diarrhoea. Many of these complaints would not go away when the water cleared.

Carol Cross was 44 years old in July 1988, living within the affected area. In 2004 she died at 58 of an unusually early form of beta amyloid angiopathy, a cerebrovascular disease most often associated with Alzheimer's. Her autopsy showed 23 micrograms of aluminium per gram of brain tissue, against the normal range of 0 to 2 micrograms per gram. An expert at her 2012 inquest called the levels beyond belief. The West Somerset coroner, Michael Rose, returned a narrative verdict that stopped short of attributing cause, but his findings did not stop short of judgment. He stated that the water authority had been gambling with as many as 20,000 lives when they failed to inform the public for sixteen days, calling the delay unacceptable. He found that there was a deliberate policy not to advise the public of the true nature of the contamination, and that the failure of the authority to visit every house and advise residents to flush their systems was a serious dereliction of duty. The Government had refused, he said, to either finance or assist research that could test the link between aluminium exposure and amyloid disease.

Two reports drawn from a 1989 inquiry led by Dame Barbara Clayton concluded that there was no convincing evidence of harm. A 1991 follow-up acknowledged that the affair had caused real suffering but attributed many of the residents' symptoms to anxiety. The first Clayton report's reference to alarming statements by some scientists was later amended in print to alarming statements by pseudo-scientists, a change that infuriated many in Camelford. A 1999 British Medical Journal study by a consultant nephrologist at John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, concluded that some victims had suffered considerable damage to their brain function, with symptoms similar to Alzheimer's disease. The study had been carried out in 1991 but its publication was delayed by ongoing litigation. The final Lowermoor Subgroup report in April 2013 concluded that exposure to the chemicals was unlikely to have caused delayed or persistent harm. In September 2013 the government formally apologised for what it described as a manifest failure to give prompt appropriate advice and information to affected consumers. For many residents the apology arrived a quarter of a century too late.

In 1991 South West Water Authority was fined 10,000 pounds with 25,000 pounds in costs at Exeter Crown Court for supplying water likely to endanger public health. The authority paid at least 123,000 pounds to settle nearly 500 initial compensation claims. In 1997 a further 148 victims accepted out-of-court damages totalling almost 400,000 pounds, with individual settlements ranging from 680 to 10,000 pounds. Some claimants later said they were railroaded into settling after being told their legal aid would be withdrawn if they continued. A judge in the civil proceedings instructed the jury that medical damages could not be awarded because no known pathway for aluminium absorption into the body had been established, a finding that Cross described as a misrepresentation of scientific facts. The water industry was about to be privatised. Documents later obtained by the Western Morning News showed that a police investigation into the incident was viewed in government as very distracting and that prosecution of South West Water would be totally unhelpful to privatisation. The water industry was sold for 3.59 billion pounds. The sale of South West Water Authority alone raised around 300 million. No named individuals were ever prosecuted. The river still runs off Bodmin Moor, and what people in Camelford remember has not been settled by any report.