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6 hours ago
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Dolphins, otters, porpoises, fish and birds across the UK have been found to have toxic “forever chemicals” in their tissue and organs, analysis of official data has revealed.
Manmade chemicals called PFAS, known as forever chemicals because they do not degrade, are used in a wide range of consumer products and industrial processes and some have been linked to serious diseases in humans and animals, including cancers. PFAS have been found widely to pollute water and soils and are thought to be in the blood of every human on the planet.
Watershed Investigations, the Marine Conservation Society and the Guardian obtained official data on more than 1,000 animals to reveal widespread contamination by a range of PFAS, particularly PFOS and PFOA, which have been studied the longest and found to be toxic, and are now banned. However, there are more than 10,000 types of PFAS and little is known about the toxic effects of most of them.
An environmental quality standard for PFOS states that no fish should have more than 9 micrograms per kilogram (9.1μg/kg) in their tissue, to protect top predators and people who consume the fish from bioaccumulating PFAS in their systems, but 12% of the fish in the datasets exceed the threshold, with some such as flounder and roach as high as 34μg/kg and 41μg/kg respectively.
If the threshold was applied across all species, almost half of all the animals sampled would exceed it. The limit is considered too high by many and the EU is considering slashing the threshold to 0.077μg/kg. If this was applied, 92% of the animals would exceed the threshold.
The data, plotted on Watershed’s pollution map, shows that many animals have been found to contain much higher levels, particularly in predators higher up the food chain. Otters were found with levels as high as 9,962μg/kg, harbour porpoises with 2,420μg/kg, grey seals with up to 357μg/kg and dolphins up to 78μg/kg. Gannet eggs had levels up to 158μg/kg and buzzard livers had up to 104μg/kg.
Major sources of PFAS pollution include airports, military sites and chemicals manufacturers. A study from Cardiff University last year showed that concentrations of PFOA were found in otters around the site of a chemicals plant where PFOA was used a lot in processing in the past, and that the levels fell the further from the site the otter was found. Watershed and the Guardian revealed high levels of PFOA in the effluent coming off the site in 2023.
Other sources are sewage treatment plants, fire stations and fire training facilities, metals companies, pulp and paper mills, leather and textiles manufacturers, energy and industrial facilities, and waste sites, including historical and permitted landfills. Old landfills built along rivers and the coast are known to leach hazardous substances into water.
PFAS can also get into soil and water from contaminated sewage sludge spread on farmland. A report for the Environment Agency suggested there could be as many as 10,000 PFAS hotspots across the country.
Some of the animal data spans a number of decades but PFAS is persistent and will not break down for thousands of years, so the results remain relevant.
Prof Alex Ford from the University of Portsmouth said he “got concerned with PFAS because they … follow the PCB story, which were banned three decades ago and they’re still causing problems now. There are concerns that some killer whale populations might go extinct because the levels are still bioaccumulating through the food chain and get to a threshold where they have adverse health effects.
“I suspect the same thing will happen with PFAS. Long after we’re pushing up daisies, people will look back in decades to come and ask, why didn’t you act sooner?”
Ford wants to see PFAS banned. “Whichever organisms we look in, we find them.” He has found newer types of PFAS in Langstone Harbour in Hampshire alongside the banned ones. “We know that they substituted them on the basis that they thought that they were less toxic. But now there are plenty of studies suggesting that they’re just as toxic, or toxic in different ways, to some of the banned ones.”
Dr Tony Fletcher, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said that “a number of studies are done on animals because one experiments on animals to get some insight into toxicology. So the fact that similar effects on the endocrine system and immune system have been shown in animal species as in humans, suggests that to some extent you can read across”.
Fletcher also supports stronger moves on regulating PFAS in the UK and, with Ford, was among 59 experts and scientists who wrote to the government last year to set out their concerns about PFAS and demand action.
Richard Benwell, the CEO of Wildlife and Countryside Link, said: “PFAS pollution is spreading across the map, up and down the food chain, and accumulating over time. We don’t know the full extent of the risks, but the presence of high concentrations of potentially harmful chemicals in such a wide spread of wildlife is a serious warning that we must stop this pollution at source.
“After years of delay, the government should ban PFAS in all but the most vital uses. Restrictions on use should be matched with new financial responsibilities for chemical companies to pay a nature restoration levy to contribute to UK environmental recovery and international nature finance.”
A spokesperson for Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the government was committed to protecting the environment from the risks posed by chemicals and that it is “rapidly reviewing the environmental improvement plan to deliver on our legally binding targets to save nature, which includes how best manage the risks posed by PFAS”.
