More than 100 old landfills across England containing potentially hazardous material have flooded at least once this century, according to analysis by Unearthed.
Historic landfills can contain dangerous substances such as heavy metals, persistent pollutants, pharmaceuticals and industrial waste. They often lack measures such as linings that limit the risks of these pollutants affecting the surrounding environment. 
Unearthed also found over 2,600 former dump sites with potentially hazardous contents within 50m of watercourses across England.
As climate change threatens to make floods more frequent in Britain the risk of landfills leaching substances into watercourses goes up, scientists warn.
“We’ve been landfilling waste for hundreds of years, but we haven’t really considered the consequences of climate change on those historic landfills and the pollution they contain,” Professor Kate Spencer, an expert on historic landfills at Queen Mary University of London, told Unearthed.  
“We now know far more about the potentially harmful effects of the waste materials and pollutants we’ve dumped, particularly chemicals like PFAS and PCBs, and how the impacts of climate change, such as flooding, could reopen pathways for those pollutants to enter the environment,” she added. 
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are a group of thousands of man-made chemicals that are widely used in consumer products to make them heat resistant, non-stick or stain-repellant. Exposure to some of these chemicals has been associated with cancers and health complaints, including liver disease and decreased fertility. PCBs (Polychlorinated Biphenyls) are man-made organic chemicals that were used in a variety of industrial processes, often for their flame-retardant properties. They have been phased out globally starting in the 1970s, with strict controls on their production and disposal, partly due to their links with cancer. They are among the substances known as “forever chemicals” because they take hundreds or even thousands of years to break down in the environment, meaning that even if they were dumped decades ago, they could still pose a risk to those who are exposed to them now. 
There are almost 20,000 historic landfill sites across the country, but records of what these sites contain are patchy. There is no central record of whether former landfills have been officially designated as contaminated sites, as this happens at local authority level but scientists believe they could contain hidden dangers. 
“Most of the 20,000-odd former landfill sites are likely to be quite safe and contain relatively inert waste, but some could be quite sinister,” Dr David Megson, a scientist at Manchester Metropolitan University who previously worked remediating old landfills, told Unearthed. “Historic reporting of what went into these sites wasn’t great, so in many cases, you’ve got little idea what is in there until you dig into it.”
Unearthed, working with Dr Paul Brindley at the University of Sheffield, overlaid Environment Agency (EA) flooding data onto the government’s map of historic landfills across England to identify sites that have flooded since the turn of the century.

Using the government’s dataset, Unearthed identified landfills that had closed before rules came into force in the mid-1990s to protect the environment from pollution, and those which had had at least half of their surface area flooded. We removed any landfills that have been built on or otherwise concreted over. Within this subset, Unearthed looked for landfills marked as taking potentially harmful waste, including “commercial” and “industrial”, as well as “special”waste, which requires special disposal requirements due to its potential to pollute and “liquid sludge”, which comes from industrial processes. 
The EA’s data does not record every flood event, while the historic landfills database only contains a partial record of what went into these former dump sites. Only 55% of sites in the historic landfills dataset record a “last input” date, showing when they stopped receiving waste. Owing to the patchy nature of both datasets, Unearthed’s figures are likely to be an underestimate.
Sites across the country
Historic landfills are dotted all over the country, but most people would have no idea they live near one. There are many public parks and nature reserves built on old landfills, and Unearthed identified instances where business parks and housing estates were built directly alongside or even overlapping former landfills with potentially hazardous contents that had flooded this century. 
The Green party, along with councils including Brighton & Hove, have backed ‘Zane’s law’, which aims to update the UK’s rules on toxic waste disposal. The law is named after Zane Gbangbola, a Surrey seven-year-old who died in 2014. His family believe his death was caused by toxic chemicals that entered their home when a nearby disused landfill flooded. 
Gbangbola’s family said that no environmental searches on their property had identified that the lake behind it was a former landfill site – this information only came to light after their son had died. Lavenders, the former landfill site, is not included in Unearthed’s analysis, as the historic landfills database does not record the types of waste it received or the date it closed.

Zane’s law would impose a duty on councils to record potentially contaminated sites, and to investigate and, where necessary, remediate former landfill sites. It would also make central government responsible for covering the cost of these works.
Green party peer Natalie Bennett told Unearthed: “The lack of adequate regulations on contaminated land poses a threat to human life and welfare, especially given climate breakdown, rising sea levels, increased rainfall, and flooding.”
Zane’s law would align the UK with “global best practice for the protection of communities from hazardous land,” she added. 
A ‘reactive approach’
Local authorities are required to keep a register of land that is known to be contaminated, and to inspect any sites that could be contaminated, but one expert said there has been an “erosion of funding” to do this work.
Councils used to be able to bid for money through the Contaminated Land Capital programme, which the EA administered, but this grant ended in 2017.
“Local authorities will be aware of problematic sites, but due to the lack of adequate funding, they have had to adopt a reactive approach,” explained Dr Grant Richardson, an environmental consultant specialising in landfills and contaminated land.
“If there’s no obvious risk of harm or pollution emanating from these sites, nothing will be done to investigate or remediate them unless sites come to be developed,” he added. “That means there are likely hundreds or potentially thousands of sites that have not been properly investigated that could be leaching contaminants at harmful levels into the environment.”
Councils in England are struggling with a funding gap that could reach £8bn by 2028/29, a spokesperson for the Local Government Association, a membership body for local authorities, told Unearthed, adding: “Without adequate funding, councils will continue to struggle to provide crucial services – with devastating consequences for those who rely on them.”
The central government is stepping up funding to councils, a spokesperson for Defra said.
Our investigation found confusion over who is responsible for regulating and monitoring historic landfills. In two instances, local authorities who Unearthed contacted about potentially hazardous former landfills in their regions told usthat the EA was responsible – even though the agency has stated publicly that it is “not the regulator of former landfill sites”.
A spokesperson for the EA told Unearthed: “While the responsibility for dealing with contaminated land in England, including historic landfills, lies with local authorities, we continue to support them in carrying out their duties set out clearly under environmental regulations.”
Information on who holds the licence for these historic landfills is lacking. Out of the 105 landfills that flooded since 2000, 13 have no licence holder listed at all. Across the country, more than 8,600 – 43% – of historic landfills have no licence holder listed and no date for when a licence was surrendered. 
Charles Watson, founder of environmental campaign group River Action, said: “Environmental protection in the UK has been subject over the last decade and a half to round after round of defunding from government. However, failure to provide adequate funding to regulate something as basic as landfill sites that could be leaching highly hazardous waste is all the more shocking.
“If our regulators can’t sort out how to protect us from pollutants that in theory have already been ‘safely’ disposed of, then we have little hope of ever seeing a holistic approach to combatting the wider sources of water pollution.”
Original article here>>

Graphics by Revisual Labs

By KYE GBANGBOLA


ACROSS this country there are families suffering from living in proximity to contaminated land and polluted water.
The suffering varies, from birth defects, as we saw in the award winning Netflix drama series ‘Toxic Town’, to miscarriages, low birth weight, cancers, tumours, respiratory issues, skin irritations, neurological deficiencies, infertility and cardio vascular disease.
It renders some homes and gardens too smelly and unbearable to stay in, homes can be unmortgageable, children can be doubled up in agony in nursery playgrounds as fumes from spontaneously combusting fires on landfills, drift across neighbourhoods.
The acclaimed programme ‘Britain’s Toxic Secret’ which was shown on BBC2 last week, now available on iPlayer features the fight for justice of the family of Zane Gbangbola and the struggle for Zane’s Law legislation.
The programme shows also cases, evidence, and public, experts, and political interest in ending abuses perpetrated on the public.
It states, authorities not considering the impact on human health is criminal.
The case of my son, Zane Gbangbola, is horrific! The killing of a child is horrific!
Zane was an innocent seven- year-old, killed in the brutal early hours of 8th February 2014, when his home was filled with the deadly toxic, invisible, odourless nerve agent Hydrogen Cyanide gas (HCN).
His mother, Nicole, found Zane collapsed, she screamed for help, as she tried to resuscitate her child, and dial 999, not knowing her own life was in mortal danger, she could collapse at any moment.
The HCN was detected by specialist HAZMAT, in a major incident, necessitating evacuating the area, and decontaminating more than 50 emergency workers.
A bridge over the River Thames at Chertsey, Surrey, was closed off, and the area evacuated for weeks.
Hydrogen Cyanide was the gas used to kill people in WWII gas chambers.
Zane’s father Kye was found in cardiac arrest, he didn’t recover, his flesh blistered and peeled off his head and back, and he was diagnosed paralysed due to Hydrogen Cyanide poisoning.
Kye and Nicole are ordinary people like you, living in an ordinary street, but unknown to them, the field next door with a lake, was secret landfill.
According to the BMJ (British Medical Journal) 80% of people in this country live within 2km of landfill.
Zane’s case is dubbed ‘The most toxic cover-up of them all’. It’s a scandal in plain sight, public authorities claim Zane’s father poisoned himself and the family with carbon monoxide (CO), but Freedom of Information requests, and expert reports revealed no CO was detected, and there was no CO source in Zane’s home.
The toxin present was very high levels of Hydrogen Cyanide.
Truth About Zane has mass union (TUC, FBU, CWU, NEU, Unison, Unite, NASUWT, HLN), and cross-party support, calling on the Government to grant Zane an Independent Panel Inquiry with full disclosure; this is how Hillsborough families, and Daniel Morgan, got the truth.

​118,000 people have signed Zane’s petition, following Zane being featured as a burning injustice in a Labour Party Manifesto. Zane’s parents speak out knowing others in this country are in danger.
Following a mass movement of grass roots support, amongst local authorities across the country, they are calling for Zane’s Law.
Zane’s Law will protect Britain’s communities from injury, harm and irremediable death, and is scheduled for a Parliamentary Summit on June 11th it proposes:
1. Every local authority must keep a full, regularly updated Register of Land that may be contaminated within their boundary.
2. The Environment Agency must keep a full, public National Register of Contaminated Land to be regularly updated by information from local authorities.
3. The Registers of Land must be accessible and available for inspection by the general public. Relevant local authorities must fully inspect any land registered that may be contaminated and must fully remediate or enforce remediation of any land which poses harm to public safety, or which pollutes controlled waters.*
4. Relevant local authorities must be responsible for inspecting previously closed landfill sites and fully remediating them, or enforcing their remediation, when they pose a risk of significant harm to people or controlled waters.
5. The Government must take full responsibility for providing the necessary funds for local authorities to meet these new requirements, following the ‘polluter pays’ principle: to recover costs as appropriate where those responsible for the pollution can be identified.
* Controlled waters are groundwater or surface water intended for human consumption.
Spontaneously, a coalition of over 20 landfill and polluted water campaigns have come together calling for the need to protect against totally preventable harms now and in the future.
Some of these abuses involve public authorities meant to protect the public, being enablers, and in some cases, local authorities are the cause of the harms as found for Corby Council in the Netflix drama series, ‘Toxic Town’.
A child is featured in the BBCs ‘Britain’s Toxic Secret’, where lead leached from contaminated land into her garden, contaminants poisoned her as she played in the soil rendering her non verbal, poor mobility, and presenting as severely autistic. Her family stopped garden play, soil ingestion and dermal contact, and she totally recovered.
Dr Ian Mudway, from Imperial College London, says the global burden of elevated lead exposure causes 0.5 to one million deaths a year.
Addressing Clean Air; as we see with the campaign for Ella Kissi Debrah, Clean Water; Feargal Sharkey’s campaign, and the third leg of the stool is ‘What Lies Beneath our Feet’ in the ground, the toxic legacy, emanating from industrialisation;
Harm from landfill is totally preventable; the Environmental Protection Act requires sites that are a ‘risk to health’ to be prioritised. We should listen to people harmed, and through enforceable law; Zane’s Law, requires the hazards to be investigated, the data collected, proper evaluation, and action taken to protect them.
This approach is achieved in progressive countries, and it is endorsed by United Nations resolutions.
Laws should not allow people to be killed and harmed, placing profit before people is criminal, and perpetrators must be held to account.
Zane’s Law incorporates the Polluter Pays principle, reducing the cost burden on the Environment Agency; ensuring the community harmed, and the wider public are not burdened with costs of remediation, where this may be required, and those harmed, are remedied accountably by the perpetrator.
Until we have Zane’s Law families are left at risk! These risks are morally repugnant, reprehensible, and criminal.
Sir Thomas Bingham said: ‘Foul play, abuse, and inhumanity has no place in law’.
Abusive scandals against ordinary people, Post Office, Grenfell, Stephen Lawrence, Infected Blood, Daniel Morgan, Nuclear Veterans, Zane, must end.
The public are awake to the patronising disposition of unaccountable power, and see the need to position laws that protect us all, we owe this to the dead, injured, survivors, and their families.
We must start to rebuild public trust in our public authorities.
If you believe little children should not go to bed at night and be poisoned in their sleep, join us in a short Zoom call on Workers Memorial Day 28th April 2025 at 6pm to 6.20pm.
Daniel Kebede, General Secretary of the NEU, brings Britain’s Andy Burnham, Mayor of Manchester, together with Zane’s Parents on a day we honour the dead, and fight for the living. You can register at https://neu-org-uk.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jxzFToKYRKmhq94RPlMrqA#/registration.
Do feel free to share. Lives are at risk if we don’t get off our backsides and act.
‘Britain’s Toxic Secret’, makes clear, the protection of our communities, and the environment is urgent. Zane’s parents say ‘the hardest part is missing our little boy, then, worrying whether the government even care about people and children harmed by toxic landfill.’