Environmental Justice Archives - Watershed Investigations

Five years after we found PFAS pouring into the River Wyre, we returned to uncover a community with contaminated blood

We tested residents living near a chemicals plant in Lancashire. Their blood contained some of the highest levels of forever chemicals ever recorded in the UK

Rachel Salvidge

Sep 24, 2026

“My husband died of cancer. My mum died of cancer. My sister died of cancer. My father died of cancer. My neighbours died of cancer. I have cancer in my head and a tumour in my spine.”

She doesn’t want to be named but she wants her story told. She tended her allotment, not far from a chemicals company, for decades, feeding herself and her family in what she thought was the healthiest way possible. Now she wonders whether its contaminated soils have contributed to her health conditions.

She has an extraordinarily high level of PFAS in her blood — 400 times higher than what would be considered normal, although given they’re manmade chemicals they have no right being in anyone’s blood at any level.

We’re sitting in the football clubhouse a Thornton Cleveleys in Lancashire. Around me people are waiting for or returning from a consultation after having received their blood test results.

All have PFAS in their blood. Most have high levels.

Five years earlier, my colleague Leana Hosea and I were clambering around the banks of the Wyre estuary, taking samples of effluent being discharged from the site of a chemicals company straight into the river Wyre.

This was before Watershed — the investigative outlet we’d go on to found — even existed. We were doing it evenings and weekends around our day jobs, convinced there was a need for it.

We sent the effluent samples to Dr Dave Megson at Manchester Metropolitan University and Professor Ian Cousins and Joost Dalmain at Stockholm University who analysed them for the so-called ‘forever chemicals’.

It turned out the site was pumping eye-watering levels of PFOA — a banned carcinogen — into a legally protected river, alongside hundreds of other types of PFAS.

We published our findings with the Guardian and a multi-agency investigation followed, with the Environment Agency, the UK Health Security Agency, the Food Standards Agency and the council all involved.

Unsurprisingly but disturbingly, the agencies found PFAS in people’s allotments and gardens. Residents were told not to eat vegetables, fruit or eggs. Interestingly, the Environment Agency decided against testing local soils for a PFAS the company itself manufactures, and one the agency suspects is reprotoxic.

The investigation continues today but the community wasn’t getting any help understanding whether the contamination might be affecting their health. So we joined forces with Dave Megson again and Sarah Moore, partner at law firm Leigh Day, to offer free blood tests to people living near the chemicals plant.

I have to say at this point that the chemicals company, AGC Chemicals Europe, says the PFOA in the discharges must be from historic pollution – ICI was at the site previously – because AGC has not used PFOA since 2012, well before it was banned in 2020.

The blood test results shocked us all.

Of the 49 people tested, 69% had combined PFAS levels in the highest health-risk category used by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The NASEM reference levels classify exposure as low risk below 2ng/ml, increased risk between 2 and 20ng/ml, and high risk above 20ng/ml. None of those tested fell into the low risk category.

The average level of PFOA was 26ng/ml, comparable with the 32.9ng/ml average found in the landmark C8 study of residents living near DuPont’s Ohio plant, made famous by the Hollywood film Dark Waters.

The highest combined PFAS result was 435ng/ml — the highest level we have found reported in the UK. Most of that was PFOA.

The highest average PFAS levels were among people living within 1km of the site, although elevated levels were also found more than 2km away.

Several households had elevated PFAS levels in more than one family member, while some of the highest burdens were found among people who had lived in the area for longer.

There was also a striking pattern around food grown at home. Every frequent consumer of home-grown eggs fell into the highest exposure category, as did 75% of those who frequently ate home-grown fruit and vegetables.

One woman, who grew up playing in the dykes behind the plant and asked not to be named, has three autoimmune diseases, cysts on her kidneys, rheumatoid arthritis, primary biliary cholangitis and temporal arteritis.

Her son was born prematurely and has cerebral palsy and ADHD.

Both her grandfathers worked for ICI on the site AGC now occupies. Both died of bowel cancer.

“We played in those dykes that ran through the houses. We ate fruit from gardens. There’s PFAS in my soils. I don’t think there’s any escaping it for anybody. Where did this all come from?”

Another was diagnosed with cancer eight years ago. “It could just be one of those things,” she told us. But she has three children heading into adult life, and on her own cul-de-sac of fifty or sixty houses, she counts six cancer diagnoses. “Could be unrelated, but they could be related. It’s a question I want answering.”

One man spent eleven years doing electrical work on ICI sites. He has fibrosis of the liver. He doesn’t drink.

A fourth woman kept hens in her garden for two years and ate the eggs the whole time. “I’ve got my little girls. I want to know if my land is contaminated. It’s my home, and it’s an asset for my children when I’m not here.”

The Environment Agency has recommended that two sets of allotments be designated as contaminated land and the council is pressing the community to hand their plots back. A third allotment has not been tested at all because it falls under a different council, despite being close to the industrial site.

It’s not possible to prove any individual’s illness is connected to PFAS. And having PFAS in your blood does not mean you will contract an illness now or in the future. What the numbers do show is that this community’s exposure to PFAS is real, measurable, and among the worst documented anywhere in the UK.

What is clear is that there need to be better understanding of exposure to PFAS and other chemicals around industrial sites like this. It’s clear the UK needs a biomonitoring programme to get a picture of national public health and to identify hotspots. It’s clear that chemicals needs much better regulation and testing before they are placed on the market.

And right now, the people of Thornton Cleveleys and the surrounding area need immediate support from their council and local health institutions.

Meanwhile, Sarah Moore is exploring legal routes for the community.

And AGC? Last week it announced it would close the its plant, citing financial difficulties.

The story ran in The Times on the front page, and the BBC and ITV covered it across their platforms.

FIND OUR PFAS STORIES HERE (CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER):

Blood toxins at record levels in residents near chemicals plant

Residents living near a a chemical factory linked to historic forever chemicals emissions have hugely elevated levels of banned carcinogencs in their blood. Watershed teamed up with Manchester Metropolitan University and Leigh Day to offer blood testing to people living near the site following Watershed’s discovery that the site was discharging high levels of the banned PFOA forever chemical into the river Wyre.

Revealed: how companies ‘secretly’ use billions of litres of public water in drought-hit England

As millions of people face hosepipe bans, many companies are not required to report, let alone cut, use of public supply.

Less than 1% of businesses in England use more water than the daily needs of 10 million people, as millions of households face hosepipe bans and three-quarters of the country is in drought.

Businesses across England use 2.6bn litres a day from the public water supply, which includes potable and non-potable water provided by water companies. In total, businesses account for about 30% of public supply use, with two-thirds of their consumption in water-stressed areas, according to Mosl, the organisation that operates England’s business water market.

Continue reading HERE

“Nobody trusts the water, not with all the cancers,” Chief Tuccaro.

Canada’s oil companies want permission to treat and release toxic waste from Alberta’s tar sands into the Athabasca River — the same river that flows into the drinking water supplies of First Nations communities. But many First Nations leaders say they’re already carrying an unbearable burden from the world’s fourth‑largest oil reserve, with health impacts that continue to mount.

‘It’s Russian roulette’: alarm as Europe backs critical minerals mines in water-stressed regions

The European Commission plans to rewrite the EU’s flagship water protection law to speed up the development of critical minerals mines, despite many being located in drying and water-stressed regions, Watershed’s analysis has found.

Mining is a water-intensive industry, requiring large volumes of water for ore processing, dust suppression, waste management and mine dewatering. While modern projects recycle water, they still require significant amounts, and in water-stressed regions those demands can add to pressure on already stretched rivers, aquifers and water supplies.

Analysis and mapping by Watershed Investigations, shared with the Guardian, found that more than half of the 33 planned new or expanded mines designated as “strategic projects” under the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act are located in areas that have been drying over the past two decades, according to Nasa satellite data.

Oil fuels separatism in Canada

It’s being called Canada’s “Brexit moment.” Alberta’s premier has announced that a referendum will be held in October, asking voters in the province whether they wish to remain part of Canada, or begin the legal process of pursuing separation. Leana Hosea reports from Alberta on the origins of the movement, its legal status and why the possibility of secession puts the rights of First Nations communities in jeopardy.

https://theworld.org/segments/2026/06/01/ballot-initiative-in-alberta-could-undermine-canadian-unity

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w1730c5l1sxt6rl

Germany was largest exporter of plastic waste in 2025, sending 810,000 tonnes overseas

UK was close behind, exporting 675,000 tonnes, with much of the waste sent to Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia

‘Drinking from a fetid pond’: superbug-creating genes found in UK’s largest lake

Watershed detected genes capable of creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs in the UK’s largest lake, which supplies drinking water to about 40% of Northern Ireland.

Our testing of water from Lough Neagh, which has a surface area 26 times bigger than Windermere, found genes resistant to a wide range of antibiotics, including carbapenems – drugs reserved for life-threatening infections when all other treatments have failed.

The discovery comes as deaths linked to antibiotic-resistant infections are rising worldwide. Nearly 400 resistant infections are reported each week in England, with deaths linked to them reaching an estimated 2,379 in 2024, according to UK Health Security Agency data.

The World Health Organization (WHO) describes this antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as “one of the most urgent, complex and frightening health challenges of our time”.

The article was published in the Guardian:

Watershed spoke about the findings on BBC R4’s Rare Earth and BBC Northern Ireland’s The Nolan Show.

Dramatic rise in water-related violence

Water-related violence has almost doubled since 2022 and little is being done to understand and address the trend and prevent new and escalating risks, experts have said. There were 419 incidents of water-related violence recorded in 2024, up from 235 in 2022, according to the Pacific Institute, a US-based thinktank. The institute has compiled evidence of hundreds of years of water-related conflicts, including cases of water being a trigger for violence, a weapon of conflict or a casualty of conflict

Watershed mapped the flashpoints: https://watershedinvestigations.com/find-out-whats-polluting-your-local-rivers-lakes-and-coast/

Half the world’s 100 largest cities are in high water stress areas

Half the world’s 100 largest cities are experiencing high levels of water stress, with 38 of these sitting in regions of “extremely high water stress”, new analysis and mapping has shown.

Water stress means that water withdrawals for public water supply and industry are close to exceeding available supplies, often caused by poor management of water resources exacerbated by climate breakdown.

Watershed Investigations and the Guardian mapped cities on to stressed catchments revealing that Beijing, New York, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro and Delhi are among those facing extreme stress, while London, Bangkok and Jakarta are classed as being highly stressed.

Separate analysis of Nasa satellite data, compiled by scientists at University College London, shows which of the largest 100 cities have been drying or getting wetter over two decades with places such as Chennai, Tehran and Zhengzhou showing strong drying trends and Tokyo, Lagos and Kampala showing strong wetting trends. All 100 cities and their trends can be viewed on Watershed’s interactive water security atlas.