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Thousands of polluted dumps everywhere England could release toxic chemicals into the environment and harm people who live nearby, experts warn.
A few decades ago, the method of disposing of industrial and municipal waste was to stick it in a hole in the ground, cover it up and hope for the best. It was known as “dilute and disperse” and assumed that the toxic substances would seep into the surrounding soil, air and water and become harmless.
There are more than 21,000 of these ‘historic’ landfills across England, the contents of which are largely unknown. A report in the British Medical Journal found that 80% of the British population live within 2 kilometers of an operating or closed landfill. The location of historical landfills and current landfills can be seen on a new pollution map published by Watershed Investigations, along with thousands of other potentially polluting sites.
Landfills are not evenly distributed; analysis of the government’s sparse database of historic landfills by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations reveals that the most deprived parts of the country contain five times as many old landfills as a proportion of their area than wealthier places, and three times as many operating landfills.
Environmental forensics expert Dr David Megson, an expert on contaminated land, said he was “not surprised that many of these sites tend to be in less affluent areas. They are often left as public open space because a developer would not be able to get permission to build houses on them due to high levels of chemical contamination.
“Many are returning to council estates and it is not unusual for children and teenagers to use these sites. These guys don’t stick to the trails and only use the sites occasionally, they’re out there regularly exploring and digging in the dirt, I’ve even seen evidence of people igniting natural gas monitoring wells because of the high methane levels right now.”
Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas and exposure to high levels can cause mood swings, slurred speech, vision problems, memory loss, nausea, vomiting, facial flushing and headaches. In severe cases, it can affect breathing and heart rate and cause balance problems, numbness, unconsciousness and even death.
It is also known that landfills can release a number of unpleasant substances into the environment, including banned toxic chemicals.
Environment Agency data obtained by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations reveals that long-lasting toxic carcinogens known as “forever chemicals” such as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have recently been found in the sediment, known as leachate, from dozens of old and existing landfills, along with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and brominated diphenyl ethers (BDE) flame retardants. In some cases, leachate is captured and treated, but this is not always the case.
“PFAS is almost ubiquitous and found in everyone [the sampled] sites, BDEs are also popping up quite a bit,” Megson said. “They are of interest because they are newly emerging pollutants in the last two decades, compared to more traditional pollutants – such as heavy metals, PCBs and dioxins – that we have known about for much longer.
“Treatment procedures, if present at all at these sites, are not designed to deal with PFAS and BDEs. We’re only seeing these contaminants recently, so there may be very large historic landfills that were deemed safe in previous investigations, but those investigations didn’t test for PFAS or BDEs – so they could actually be considered contaminated land. if you had to test them now.”
Environmentalist Dr. Daniel Drage studied the data and noted that “the fact that we’re seeing PFAS in landfills that haven’t received waste for 20 to 30 years and are seeing the highest levels now shows what a challenge we face in dealing with the problem. Dealing with PFAS-contaminated waste in the next five to 10 years will be a multi-billion pound industry and landfilling is simply not a suitable method of disposal. There is a lot of evidence to show that PFAS will not remain in the landfill and much of it will re-enter the environment.
Of particular concern are the thousands of landfills located in flood zones and along the coast; floods mobilize chemicals and waves break up and erode landfills built along the shoreline.
Councils should be responsible for looking after old landfills if the owner cannot be identified. Responsibility is transferred to the Environment Agency only when a site is deemed to be at risk. But since the government withdrew the contaminated land fund in 2017, financially strapped local authorities rarely have the resources to seek out or actively manage sites.
An Environment Agency spokesman said: “We provide expert technical and regulatory support to local authorities to help them meet their responsibilities for regulating contaminated land in England. When contaminated land needs to be remediated, we work with partners to reduce unacceptable risks to human health and the environment.”
Historical landfills and active waste sites can be seen at Watershed’s new pollution map
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