A CORONER has re-appealed for public help to find the mother of a baby boy whose body was found at a Bradford waste sorting site.

It is just slightly more likely than not that the premature-sized baby, discovered on a conveyor belt by workers at Associated Waste Management in Shipley on September 18 last year, had been born alive, said assistant Bradford coroner Oliver Longstaff at yesterday's inquest.

The inquest heard distressing details of how workers discovered the baby's remains in piles of rubbish after passing through a number of sifting and sorting machines.

Because the inquest could not answer the four set questions of who the baby was, when he died, where he died and how he died, Mr Longstaff recorded an open verdict and added: "It's likely this inquest will get publicity and if it helps find this poor child's mother then this inquest will have served its purpose."

Worker Gary Normington, who made the shocking find and had shouted at colleagues to press the stop button, said in a statement read out to the inquest: "The image will stay with me forever. I'm still very much in shock."

About 50 wagons bring 300 tons of waste to the Canal Road site every day. Police were able to identify 35,000 homes largely in Bradford and some in Horsforth whose bins had been collected that day.

Detective Constable Jim Harrison detailed the extensive investigation which involved a letter-drop to all those identified addresses and included house-knocking, but there had not been a huge amount of response to that, he said.

Information from five of the area's health authorities brought up 15 particular females who had either been pregnant and been disengaged with the midwifery services or who had given birth but not kept in contact.

Detectives tracked all the women and visited their homes to see their babies "live and kicking" said DC Harrison. The search also led them to the former Czechoslovakia where one woman had returned to have a healthy birth. "We eliminated everyone of them," said DC Harrison.

The baby's pale skin and a few strands of blonde or light brown hair on his head had suggested he was white, the inquest was told.

The end of his umbilical cord was ragged and had not been clamped. A post mortem could not find a cause of death but determined the baby had probably died a few days before he was discovered. There was also no evidence it had been a drugs-death.

Forensics had taken a full DNA from the child and managed to get a partial DNA profile from what they believe could be his mother. That profile was matched to national and local DNA databases.

But nothing was found, although it will be reviewed every year as new profiles are added.

The police case remains open.