https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/11/michael-sheen-found-toxic-forever-chemicals-blood-pcb-wales/
Michael Sheen: I found toxic forever chemicals in my blood
Michael Sheen has revealed that he found dangerous forever chemicals in his blood.
The Good Omens actor made the discovery during an investigation into buried toxic waste in Wales and the North West.
Now he is calling for official testing at more than a dozen sites where chemical companies such as Monsanto dumped tens of thousands of tons of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the 1970s.
PCBs were once used as coolants, electrical insulators and lubricants, but were banned in Britain in the 1980s because they damage human DNA, are linked to cancer and can stay in soil, water and human tissue for decades.
In a documentary for the BBC, Sheen discovered that residents living near the dumps had suffered rare cancers and had abnormally high levels of PCBs in their blood, while soils had nearly 2,000 times the normal levels of the chemical.
He found PCBs in his own blood when he agreed to be tested to act as a control.
āI wasnāt quite expecting how shocked Iād be by that,ā he told The Telegraph.
āI thought āof course Iāll be tested because you wonāt find anythingā, and then when you get the results, you realise there is no safe level, we all have it in us.ā
Sheen, who was born in Newport and grew up in Port Talbot, South Wales, was browsing the internet nearly a decade ago when he stumbled across the story of Douglas Gowan, a consultant at the National Farmersā Union who had first discovered the toxic waste problem.
In 1972, Gowan found that nine cows had died of poisoning at a farm next to Brofiscin Quarry in South Wales, where drums of toxins had been dumped by chemical manufacturers. He later identified 13 other sites where similar dumping had occurred.
Sheen spent two days video interviewing Gowan and said what he had heard āmade my blood run coldā.
Gowan, who died in 2018, struggled to get the authorities to take his claims seriously. He was attacked by masked men with steel bars outside his private membersā club and was accused of doctoring his results by the Government.
Sheen began examining the claims alongside Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor, investigative journalists, and found that by the early 1970s, Monsanto knew that PCBs caused health problems, so it stopped production at Anniston, Alabama.
Doctors in the town claimed that babies were born with their intestines outside their bodies, or without eyes, and the town sued the company, settling for $300m (Ā£225m). But as Monsanto decreased production in the US, it ramped up PCB output at Newport.
The city once produced a third of the worldās PCBs and used to dump the chemicals in the River Severn and the Severn Estuary before they were banned. They then started burying the waste in a series of quarries in South Wales.
Residents told the programme that children would paddle in strange ājellyā that was left by the waste trucks, or find scabs on their hands and feet, while residents noticed that their dogs developed spleen cancer or lost their hair.
Villagers complained of contracting tumorous lumps on their backs as well as brain, breast and lymph node cancer.
The Rev Paul Cawthorne, a Shropshire vicar, told the documentary that he became involved in the issue following a deathbed confession from a parishioner who worked in chemical dumping.
āHe said a driver got crystals on his hand and his hand had broken out into a rash instantaneously,ā he said.
āHe went to the site manager and said, āwhatās going on here?ā and the site manager had looked him straight in the eyes and said, āYou donāt want to go asking questions like thatā.ā
The documentary commissioned testing of the sites identified by Gowan and found that 13 of the 14 dumping grounds had higher than normal levels of PCBs.
Brofiscin Quarry on the edge of the village of Groesfaen, near Cardiff, was found to have 160 times higher levels than the national average, even though it was capped in 2011 to stop waste leaking out.
A farm in Alvanley in Cheshire, owned by Paul and Wendy Jackson, was nearly 2,000 times higher than the average. Mr Jackson was also found to have one of the highest readings of PCBs in his blood.
āI hope thereās a public outcryā
Sheen said: āPeople are dying of cancers, rare cancers, and thereās illness, and itās incredibly worrying.
āIām hoping that people will be so outraged and shocked by this story that there will be a demand for something to be done.ā
He added: āThe places where the dumping took place share a pattern, a history of chronic illness that could potentially mask any problems and a desperate need for employment, so nobody feels they can speak out.
āDouglas said there were many, many more, and we only knew of a few. Goodness knows how much of this is out there.ā
Natural Resources Wales said PCB leaks at Brofiscin Quarry warranted no further action. Cheshire council is investigating the Alvanley farm.
Monsantoās chemical arm became Solutia in 1997, which was acquired by Eastman Chemical Company in 2012, which took on the historical legacy pollutant liabilities.
The company did not respond to a request for comment by the BBC or The Telegraph.
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