‘It’s a poison and it’s killing us’: the hidden dangers of old UK landfills

Old landfills are often described as ticking timebombs, but some have already detonated.

In the 1960s, a landfill at Brofiscin quarry in Groesfaen, south Wales – one of a group of old landfills known to contain cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) – ruptured, causing a farmer’s cattle to fall ill and calves to be born with serious deformities.

Another in Rhosllanerchrugog, near Wrexham, is visible today as an open acid tar lagoon, with just a fence to protect people and animals from the lake’s oily black goop.

In Surrey, some lakes that were once gravel pits are used for swimming, fishing and boating. After falling into disuse they became landfills before rainwater filled some of them, disguising their contents. Others were filled with soils and are largely hidden. Data obtained by Watershed Investigations and the Guardian reveals there are about 140 former landfill gravel pits in Surrey alone. Three surround the much-used lakes around the Thorpe Park theme park.

The parents of seven-year-old Zane Gbangbola claim that gas rising from one such lake in Chertsey killed him in his bed and paralysed his father, Kye Gbangbola, from the waist down. Zane had a heart attack.

The catastrophe hit the family during the floods of 2014, when water from the lake behind their house drained into their basement. Zane’s mother, Nicole Lawler, found her son unconscious in his room and Gbangbola slumped over in his bedroom. Surrey fire and rescue recorded hydrogen cyanide on its instruments three times inside the house.

Despite this, the coroner ruled the boy had been poisoned by carbon monoxide from a pump being used to remove water from the house.

“We’ve been gaslighted for a decade,” says Gbangbola, who continues to campaign for an independent inquiry into the incident, something the Labour party has promised if it wins power.

Documents from the Health Protection Agency obtained by Watershed say that at the levels of hydrogen cyanide found in the house, prolonged exposure could lead to cardiac arrest and that the family could have been exposed for weeks. The family was not informed about the lake’s past before buying their house.

It is not clear what the source of any hydrogen cyanide could be. It could be linked to industry, although it is documented that weapons were dumped into landfills in postwar periods, and in 2020 a Ministry of Defence whistleblower told the BBC that subcontractors had dumped chemicals on land in Chertsey, including behind Zane’s home.

Kye is campaigning for legislation that would force authorities to keep up-to-date records on contaminated land, undertake regular inspections and fund the cleanup of problem sites.

“There is great public concern and calls for progressive enforceable legislation to protect communities from the harm [contaminated land] generates,” he says. “If these things are not addressed, more and more people will meet harm or worse.”

Today’s landfills are supposed to be better managed – pits are lined to prevent nasty substances oozing out, they are capped to try to prevent unpleasant vapours rising out of the ground, and are regulated by the Environment Agency. But this does not always prevent them from being a problem for those living alongside them.

“It’s like living in a gas chamber,” says Rebecca Currie, who spent years living close to Walleys quarry landfill in Silverdale near Newcastle-under-Lyme. Her son Mathew has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung disease that causes breathing problems. Consultants said the gas from the landfill was shortening Mathew’s life and that the people living around the site had disproportionately high respiratory problems.

Currie took the Environment Agency to court for failing to regulate the site properly, claiming Mathew’s human rights had been breached, and won on that point.

Recorded emissions appeared to be dropping for a while but it transpired the Environment Agency’s instruments were not working properly and the emissions were being underreported. The community continues to suffer.

“It’s horrific. We had to keep our windows closed, we taped up doors and keyholes, kept the plugs in the bath and sinks and kept the toilet lid down to try to keep out the smell. But it’s not just a smell, it’s a poison and it’s killing us,” says Currie.

A spokesperson for Walleys quarry said the landfill site “holds an environmental permit and is stringently regulated by the Environment Agency to ensure the on-site activities do not cause harm to human health or the environment. The management team recognise the impact that odours can have for local residents. The site team continually inspect the waste deliveries and activities on the landfill to ensure that odour risks are managed, minimised and eradicated. The team is focused on managing the site to minimise impacts to the community around the site and we will continue to do so.”

Some of the many communities affected by nearby landfills have formed a national group called Injustice of Landfill, led by James Tomlinson from Chesterfield.

“Most of the landfills are in poor areas and on the doorsteps of suffering communities,” he says. “It’s horrendous and people have given up hope because they’ve been fighting for years, up and down the country.”

Tomlinson was told by the Environment Agency that about 1,500 landfills were regulated and that “a small number of landfill sites across the country are not being operated to the standards we expect and require. In a few cases, they are causing a significant impact on local communities, particularly through odour emissions … we will continue to focus our regulatory work to ensure that landfill operators are managing their sites in a way that prevents or minimises emissions, using all the regulatory tools available to us to achieve this and taking robust enforcement action where necessary.”

• Historic landfills and current waste sites can be viewed on Watershed’s pollution map