Last February, I got a call from a woman called Sam Hammond. We had been speaking on and off for a while over her growing concern that her garden could be affected by pollution from a nearby chemical plant. That morning, Sam had been hand-delivered a letter from her council informing her that her pet ducks’ eggs, reared in her garden, were contaminated with Pfas chemicals.
Seven months later Sam has an answer to that question. Pfas are a group of thousands of synthetic compounds known as “forever chemicals” because of their persistence in the environment. In 2024, Wyre borough council and the Environment Agency launched an investigation into contamination of one type of Pfas – Pfoa, a group 1 carcinogen that was globally banned in 2020 – in the vicinity of the AGC Chemicals Europe factory in Thornton-Cleveleys, a town to the north of Blackpool.
Pfoa was emitted in huge quantities from the AGC Chemicals factory up until 2012. The level of Pfas in one of Sam’s duck eggs was so high that if she ate just one a week, it would exceed the European safe level 10 times over. Sam and her children had been eating these eggs every single day for decades.
The risk was increasingly clear, but residents did not yet know if the Pfas had entered their systems until last week when law firm Leigh Day, working with Dr Dave Megson, a forensic environmental scientist at Manchester Metropolitan University, and in association with Watershed Investigations, published the blood test results of 49 individuals who live around the factory. In the UK, there is no guidance on what constitutes a safe level of Pfas in blood. However, in the US the guidelines state that if the sum of seven Pfas chemicals is above 20 ng/ml, there is an increased risk of adverse effects and that clinicians should consider more frequent, targeted health screenings.
The results showed that 70% of those tested in Thornton-Cleveleys had a combined Pfas level above 20 ng/ml. Sam’s level is 25 ng/ml – putting her firmly in this high-risk category. But what is perhaps even more alarming is the level of Pfas in her son’s blood: 111 ng/ml.
We moved here, chose this property and I feel guilty because I’ve exposed them to that, even though I know it’s not my fault.” The results specifically revealed that nearly 70% of those tested had increased levels of Pfoa. Pfoa exposure is linked to a range of serious illnesses and has been linked specifically to kidney cancer. In June, a government commissioned study found no higher-than-expected rates for most cancers but found that two areas – one south-east of the factory and one north of Blackpool – had recorded “higher-than-expected” rates of kidney cancer.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
