Hollywood actor Michael Sheen discovered dangerous forever chemicals in his blood during a BBC documentary investigating toxic waste sites across Wales and the North West. Sheen is now calling for official testing at more than a dozen locations where chemical companies dumped thousands of tons of polychlorinated biphenyls in the 1970s.
Michael Sheen Discovers PCBs in His Own Blood
Michael Sheen uncovered dangerous forever chemicals in his own bloodstream during a personal investigation into buried toxic waste in Wales and the North West, the outlet reported. The actor agreed to be tested to act as a control during filming for a new BBC documentary examining historic chemical dumping sites.
I wasn’t quite expecting how shocked I’d be by that,
Sheen told The Telegraph regarding his test results. I thought ‘of course I’ll be tested because you won’t find anything’, and then when you get the results, you realise there is no safe level, we all have it in us.
Polychlorinated biphenyls, commonly known as PCBs, were widely utilized throughout the last century as coolants, electrical insulators, lubricants, and components in everyday items such as lipsticks and white goods. British authorities banned the toxic substances in the 1980s after determining that they damage human DNA, link to cancer, and persist in soil, water, and human tissue for decades.
Douglas Gowan and the Whistleblower Legacy
Sheen first encountered the hidden scandal nearly a decade ago while browsing the internet, where he stumbled upon the story of Douglas Gowan. Gowan, a former National Farmers’ Union consultant, discovered in 1972 that nine cows had died of poisoning at a farm adjacent to Brofiscin Quarry in South Wales, according to the source. Gowan eventually identified 13 other sites across Wales and the North West where chemical manufacturers had dumped tens of thousands of tons of waste.
Gowan alleged that chemical giant Monsanto had dumped huge amounts of industrial chemicals all around Wales,
describing them as some of the worst contaminants known to man,
the BBC reported. Gowan attempted to sound the alarm on 14 sites—12 of which were located in Wales—but faced severe resistance. Government officials accused him of doctoring his research, and masked men attacked him with steel bars outside his private members’ club.
Sheen spent two days conducting a video interview with Gowan shortly before the whistleblower died in 2018. Gowan died before his initial warnings were fully heeded by authorities.
Monsanto’s Newport Operations and Global Fallout
Investigation by Sheen alongside investigative journalists Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor revealed that by the early 1970s, Monsanto recognized that PCBs caused severe health problems. The company subsequently halted production at its facility in Anniston, Alabama, the source noted. In that American town, local doctors reported that babies were born with their intestines outside their bodies or without eyes, prompting a lawsuit that resulted in a $300m (£225m) settlement with the company.
As production scaled down in the United States, Monsanto intensified PCB output at its plant in Newport, South Wales. The city once manufactured a third of the world’s PCBs. Initially, operators dumped the chemicals directly into the River Severn and the Severn Estuary before federal and regional bans took effect, after which they began burying the waste in regional quarries.
Eastman Chemical Company, which holds responsibility for Monsanto’s legacy production in the United Kingdom, did not respond to inquiries from Sheen’s production team or the BBC.
Testing Contaminated Sites and Community Impact
The documentary commissioned professional testing across the 14 locations identified by Gowan, confirming that 13 of them exhibited higher than normal PCB concentrations. Brofiscin Quarry on the edge of Groesfaen, near Cardiff, registered contaminant levels 160 times higher than the national average, despite workers capping the site in 2011 to prevent leakage. Meanwhile, a farm in Alvanley, Cheshire, operated by Paul and Wendy Jackson, recorded soil levels nearly 2,000 times higher than average, alongside extremely high PCB readings in Mr. Jackson’s blood.
Local residents shared grim accounts with the documentary team, describing children paddling in strange jelly left behind by waste trucks or developing scabs on their hands and feet. Villagers reported contracting tumorous lumps on their backs alongside brain, breast, and lymph node cancers, while household pets suffered from spleen cancer and hair loss.
The Rev. Paul Cawthorne, a Shropshire vicar, told the documentary that he joined the fight after hearing a deathbed confession from a parishioner who worked in chemical dumping. He said a driver got crystals on his hand and his hand had broken out into a rash instantaneously,
Cawthorne recalled. He went to the site manager and said, ‘what’s going on here?’ and the site manager had looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘You don’t want to go asking questions like that’.
Sheen emphasizes that the targeted dump sites share a common pattern of chronic illness and economic desperation that historically prevented workers and residents from speaking out. As the documentary brings these findings to light, the actor demands broader public awareness to push authorities toward official testing and remediation at the remaining unaddressed locations.
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