Michael Sheen’s two part documentary Buried (a joint Open University/BBC production) is a shocking examination of the frightening pollution inflicted on Wales by giant American chemical company Monsanto. Available on BBC iPlayer for those who missed the programme when it showed on BBC2 earlier this month, it is compulsory viewing for anyone who cares about Wales.

Let us put to one side Monsanto’s production of various appalling products such as the insecticide DDT, the herbicide Agent Orange that the US military sprayed on Vietnam, the herbicides Roundup and Decamba, genetically-modified food and bovine growth hormones and concentrate on Monsanto’s production of highly carcinogenic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) which has led to widespread environmental contamination with devastating effects around the world. It was first exposed by the brave people of working-class Anniston, Alabama, where Monsanto operated a PCB manufacturing plant from 1929 to 1971 and routinely dumped the toxic waste in local waterways and contaminated soil in unlined landfills. The contamination left residents with high rates of unusual and often lethal brain and liver cancer, melanomas, damage to the immune system and birth deformities (testing showed PCB levels 200 times higher than the federal safety limit in local creeks). Internal documents revealed Monsanto knew about PCB dangers as early as 1937 but continued production until 1977. In 2003 Monsanto paid $700 million to settle claims by 20,000 Anniston residents over PCB contamination.

Despite knowing how dangerous PCBs were, Monsanto continued making it but moved production from the USA to Europe and Asia in the 1970s in an attempt to avoid scrutiny and keep the huge profits rolling in from multiple PCB usage in a wide variety of industrial processes (electrical equipment, white goods, cement, plastic, machinery, buildings, inks, surface coatings, paint, adhesives, cosmetics and food products). To this end, they started PCB production at Monsanto plants in Newport Docks and Cefn Mawr in Denbighshire, knowing that Wales had no political structures or institutions to defend it and was the place where the UK traditionally dumped its poisons without opposition or repercussions. Throughout the 1970s Monsanto proceeded to dump vast amounts of the PCB waste generated at Newport and Cefn Mawr into quarries in Glamorgan, Gwent and Denbighshire as well as directly into the Severn estuary.

PCBs were made illegal in the USA in 1979, the UK and EU in 1981 and internationally in 1986, but these ‘forever chemicals’ don’ t just disappear. Marine life exposure to PCBs and their ability to trickle across food chains means humans still ingest these chemicals from eating dairy, salmon, shellfish and animal fat, and PCBs were also transmitted via airborne means and thus readily inhaled, particularly by those living near contaminated sites. PCBs do not easily break down and linger for untold decades in landfill sites, seeping and spreading through soil with the help of rainwater. They also linger by re-emerging from buried sediment on the ocean floor and by absorbing organic matter. PCBs bind tightly to soil, to sediments and to organic particles and can be stored in the fatty tissue of humans, fish and other animals that encounter them. The highest levels of PCBs are invariably found in predators at the top of the food chain, such as whales, dolphins and humans.

Michael Sheen’s heart-rending documentary showed what the outcome has been for Wales, concentrating on the 12 known sites where PCBs were dumped:
●Brofiscin (just outside Cardiff’s north-west border in Rhondda Cynon Taf)
●Cefn Mawr
●Glebelands (Gwent)
●Llwyneinion (near Wrecsam)
●Maendy (RCT)
●Nant Gledyr (Caerffili)
●Newport Docks
●Rhiwabon (near Cefn Mawr)
●Severn Estuary
●Trefforest (RCT)
●Ty Llwyd (Caerffili)
●Ynysddu (Caerffili)
The sight of fenced-off no-go areas, PCB seeping out of piles of rusting drums, streams foaming with toxins, lakes oozing black gunk and pleasant semi-detached homes adjacent to barren, carcinogenic wastelands was both shattering and infuriating. It should all have been cleared away and cleaned up years ago. But the problem, as ever for Wales, is being shackled to the UK’s primitive standards, inadequate laws and subservience to big business. The feeble powers grudgingly granted to Wales by the London Government are entirely toothless when it comes to environmental issues (as well as virtually every other area of Welsh life). The main problem is that Westminster determines all the legal definitions that are binding on Wales. So, for instance, Wales has no power to determine its own definition of what constitutes ‘contaminated land’ but must abide by the UK definition which, of course, sets the bar so high that virtually no land counts as contaminated. Therefore Wales’ environment watchdog National Resources Wales (NRW) can only monitor, take samples, tinker with drainage, erect fences and put up warning signs but never take actual action that would begin to repair this atrocious defiling of our country and prevent more terrible deaths by poisoning of Welsh people.

Without the right to raise its own finances and run its own exchequer, and with the resources that should belong to Wales stashed away in England, the Senedd cannot begin to tackle monsters like Monsanto – or, since Monsanto was sold off and wound up in 2018, its successors like German company Bayer and US company Eastman, current owner of the Newport site. Neither can the Welsh Government and NRW properly begin the enormous task of not only clearing up the PSB sites (and the complete lack of records kept by the British State means there could be many more), but also tackling the following:
●The astounding 45,000 known contaminated land sites across Wales (old factories, gasworks, landfills, disused quarries, etc), the appalling legacy of being an exploited colony deemed to have no interests of its own. Because of the derisory pittance allocated by the UK Government that for centuries organised and enabled this devastation, the Welsh Government has so far only been able to deal with a mere 82 of these sites, meaning the full scale of the dangers at thousands of others are as yet unknown and unmonitored.
●The 1,300 abandoned metal mines (copper, gold, iron, lead, silver, zinc) where heaps of waste were never cleared but just left to ooze their poisons into surrounding aquifers and soil. This reckless pollution currently leaks an estimated 350 to 500 tonnes of heavy metals like lead, cadmium and arsenic into the environment every year and seeps contamination into 440 miles of Welsh rivers and watercourses.
●The 2,566 coal tips, identified and mapped for the first time ever after the Welsh Government set up the Coal Tip Safety Task Force in 2020. There was no support or interest from the UK Government that had presided over the mass tipping that bestowed the infamous Aberfan disaster on Wales. Such tipping enabled Britain to cheaply build its empire and navy on Welsh coal while leaving Wales impoverished. With miniscule resources the Task Force has now surveyed all the tips and designated 368 as high-risk. The daunting job of removing or reducing them is underway, but this does not include the estimated 20,000+ non-coal tips in Wales yet to be categorised or assessed or the extant quarries still operating that London does not permit Wales to regulate*.

Adding this all up, this means there are approximately 70,000 locations in Wales that represent a stability hazard, a toxic contamination threat or a menace to water standards. Yes, that’s right, 70,000 – a mind-blowing 10 in every square mile. This is just one of the dreadful consequences of total rule by England for the last 500 years and counting. Nobody with some working brain cells and an iota of decency and fairness can possibly defend the continuation of the wicked, ridiculous, cruel and utterly failed status quo. CYMRU RYDD!

*NOTE
The terrifying disaster at Lesser Garth Quarry that has recently struck Gwaelod-y-Garth in north-west Cardiff thanks to this obscene pillaging of our land and the despicable irresponsibility, callousness and stupidity of Cardiff Council is still unfolding. An article is being prepared and will appear shortly.