What’s Been Buried? The Toxic Legacy Hidden in Britain’s Landscapes
Last night I watched Buried with Michael Sheen, a BBC documentary investigating one of the more uncomfortable environmental legacies hidden beneath parts of Britain.
At the centre of the story is Douglas Gowan, a farming consultant who began investigating pollution around Brofiscin Quarry in South Wales after livestock deaths nearby. The quarry had been used for industrial waste, including waste from Monsanto, which manufactured polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) at its Newport plant [1].
PCBs are internationally controlled as persistent organic pollutants. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies them as Group 1 carcinogens, meaning there's sufficient evidence that they can cause cancer in humans [2]. These chemicals were once valued because of their stability and were used in electrical equipment, industrial fluids and numerous other applications. Their stability, however, means they don't readily break down in the environment. Instead, they can persist in soils and sediments, accumulate in animals and move through food chains. Thankfully their manufacture has long since ceased in the UK, but unfortunately their presence hasn't.
When Pollution Outlives Its Creators
Brofiscin is a striking example of the difficulty dealing with persistent pollution. The former limestone quarry received industrial waste during a period when environmental regulation was dramatically different from today. Waste-disposal licensing didn't come into force until 1974, after dumping at the quarry had ceased [3]. Decades later, regulators were still dealing with the consequences.
Brofiscin Quarry was formally designated as contaminated land and a Special Site in 2005 because of pollution of controlled waters. An engineered cap was installed over the waste mass as part of remediation works subsequently completed in 2013. Rhondda Cynon Taf Council's contaminated-land strategy states that it does not consider further action at the quarry necessary at present [4]. But this doesn't mean the contamination has disappeared. Capping contaminated land can interrupt pathways through which people, wildlife or water might be exposed, rather than physically remove every contaminant beneath it.
The documentary also raises deeply concerning questions about historic contamination and possible impacts on nearby communities, including reports of illness and cancer. Because PCBs are hazardous, persistent pollutants with established human-health risks, those questions deserve to be taken seriously.
However, individual illnesses near contaminated sites can't automatically be attributed to PCB exposure. Establishing causation requires epidemiological evidence, exposure assessment and careful consideration of other risk factors. Being precise about that distinction doesn't make the issue less concerning.
How Much Contaminated Land Is Still Out There?
Britain's landscapes carry the physical history of industrialisation: mines, quarries, factories, gasworks, landfills, chemical works, railway land and countless smaller industrial sites. Sometimes that history is obvious, and sometimes it's buried.
A 2016 House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee report cited an earlier estimate that around 325,000 sites in the UK were affected by some degree of contamination, covering approximately 300,000 hectares [5].
This doesn't mean 325,000 sites present a current danger. Whether contamination creates an unacceptable risk depends on factors including the pollutant, its concentration, how people or ecosystems might be exposed and how the land is being used. The exact figure matters less than what it represents: this is a nationwide story.
What Does This Mean for Nature Restoration?
For me, this is where the story becomes particularly important. At Green Up Britain, we often say that restoration begins with understanding, and by that we mean understanding geology, soils, hydrology, wildlife, land-use history and the relationships between them. It's clear, however, that contamination needs to sit on that list too.
For example, where contaminants are present in the soil, changing the site's hydrology could alter how pollutants move, potentially creating new pathways through which contaminants reach groundwater, rivers, wildlife or people.
This doesn't mean contaminated landscapes can't be restored. It means we need to understand them fully before we intervene. A good restoration baseline should assess not only what's living on a site today, but what previous generations may have left in its soils, sediments and water.
Nature Can't Make Every Problem Disappear
There's something tempting about the idea that if we simply give damaged land back to nature it will heal. Sometimes ecological recovery can be astonishing, but nature isn't magic.
Plants, fungi and microorganisms can sometimes immobilise, transform or help remove particular contaminants; techniques such as phytoremediation and bioremediation can form part of contaminated-land management. But the appropriate intervention depends on the pollutant, its concentration, the geology and hydrology of the site, exposure pathways and what the land will ultimately be used for. Ecological appearance and ecological health are not always the same thing.
Who Inherits Environmental Damage?
The people living with the consequences of legacy pollution may have had absolutely nothing to do with creating it. This makes contaminated land an issue of environmental justice as much as ecology.
Communities deserve to know what is beneath the places where they live. They deserve transparent monitoring, clear explanations of risk and serious investigation where credible concerns arise. And where contamination presents an unacceptable risk, somebody has to take responsibility for dealing with it.
The alternative is that environmental costs created by one generation are quietly passed to another.
What Can You Do About It?
If this has made you wonder what's buried near you, your local council is a good place to start.
Local authorities in England have duties under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to inspect their areas for contaminated land and maintain public registers containing specified information about regulatory action [6]. Many councils also publish contaminated-land strategies and information about known sites.
But these records are not comprehensive maps of every potentially contaminated site. Absence from a register does not necessarily mean that a piece of land has no history of contamination.
Historical land-use information can therefore be useful too. Old Ordnance Survey maps and environmental searches can reveal former factories, quarries, landfills, gasworks and other uses that may warrant further investigation.
If you're buying a property, environmental searches undertaken during conveyancing can provide information about potential land-contamination risks. In former coalfield areas, mining records can provide another important part of the picture.
None of these sources guarantees a definitive answer. Contaminated land is assessed on a site-specific, risk-based basis, and a historical industrial use does not automatically mean that land is unsafe today. But asking what was there before is a very good place to start.
The Landscape Remembers
One of the ideas I keep returning to in restoration is that landscapes carry their history with them. Mining waste, industrial chemicals, landfill, heavy metals and PCBs become part of the story written into the land alongside its geology and hydrology. The photograph accompanying this article was taken recently at Brambleton Park in Farnham. Today it looks like an ordinary green space of grasses, scrub and trees. From the 1950s to the 1980s, it was a landfill.
Any restoration has to begin with curiosity rather than assumption, as does living on the land we've inherited. Before deciding what a place should become, we need to understand what it has been. And what has been buried.
References
1. Welsh Government (2023). ATISN 18757: information concerning PCB contamination and former industrial sites in Wales. The records describe Brofiscin Quarry as a former limestone quarry that received waste from Monsanto and numerous other industrial operators.
2. International Agency for Research on Cancer (2016). IARC Monographs Volume 107: Polychlorinated Biphenyls and Polybrominated Biphenyls. PCBs are classified as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1).
3. UK Parliament (2007). Waste Management: Brofiscin Quarry. Parliamentary records state that waste-disposal licensing did not come into force until 1974 and that dumping at Brofiscin had ceased by 1972.
4. Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council. Contaminated Land Inspection Strategy. Brofiscin was designated as contaminated land and a Special Site in 2005, with subsequent remediation. Remediation works were completed in 2013.
5. House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (2016). Soil Health. The report cites a 2005 estimate that approximately 325,000 UK sites were affected by some degree of contamination, covering around 300,000 hectares.
6. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (2012). Environmental Protection Act 1990: Part 2A Contaminated Land Statutory Guidance (England). Wales has separate, equivalent guidance under the same Part 2A framework.
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