Thornton-Cleveleys residents receive PFAS blood-test results after local contamination concerns

Residents of Thornton-Cleveleys near the Hillhouse chemical site have received PFAS blood-test results that show elevated PFOA in many of the 49 people tested. Leigh Day, the law firm that arranged the testing, says 69.4% had PFOA concentrations above 20 nanograms per millilitre. The findings sharpen local concern about exposure, but the selected group does not establish how common similar results are across the town.

The tests were carried out over the summer by experts at Manchester Metropolitan University, and participants received their results on 23 September, according to Leigh Day. The firm selected people using criteria that included how close they lived to the site, how long they had lived in the area and whether they ate locally grown produce. Those criteria matter when interpreting the figures: this was a group chosen partly for possible exposure, rather than a representative sample of residents.

What the tests found

Leigh Day reported an average PFOA concentration of 26 ng/ml. It placed 69.4% of participants above 20 ng/ml and the remaining 30.6% between 2 and 20 ng/ml; none had a result below 2 ng/ml. The figures come from the testing organiser's public account. The complete anonymised dataset and a peer-reviewed analysis were not available with that announcement.

The firm used categories drawn from US National Academies guidance to describe the results. That guidance's 20 ng/ml comparison concerns the combined concentration of seven specified PFAS chemicals in blood, according to the Guardian's account. Leigh Day's reported percentages concern PFOA alone. Its use of the category is therefore the firm's interpretation of its findings, rather than a PFOA-only threshold set by the US guidance. The UK has no defined safe PFAS blood level, the Guardian reported.

The Guardian spoke to residents about what their results meant to them. It reported a result of 25 ng/ml for Sam Hammond, a PFAS result of 111 ng/ml for her son, and 43 ng/ml for allotment holder Alan Hodson. Hammond told the newspaper she felt sick about her son's result and worried about her children. Their accounts convey the personal impact of the testing; individual readings cannot be used as estimates for the wider community.

A longer local investigation

Wyre Council says PFOA was used and released to air at the former ICI site, now operated by AGC Chemicals Europe, from the 1950s until 2012. The council and Environment Agency are investigating possible historic contamination around Hillhouse. The site's industrial history is relevant background, but a blood test cannot determine when or where a person's exposure occurred, or which route it took. PFAS can also come from food, water, air, dust and consumer products, the council says.

There is separate evidence of PFAS in local food. In February, Wyre Council relayed precautionary Food Standards Agency advice that people within one kilometre of Hillhouse should not eat home-produced eggs or put egg-laying birds from that area into the food chain. Tests of a small number of eggs found elevated PFAS. The agency said one of those eggs a week could reach or exceed the European Food Safety Authority's tolerable weekly intake, before accounting for PFAS in other foods.

Leigh Day says soil testing has also found elevated PFOA in samples from nearby properties and allotments. Wyre Council says screening results that exceed assessment levels call for further investigation; they do not on their own establish a health concern or the land's legal contamination status. The Environment Agency is conducting the detailed investigation, while the council is responsible for deciding whether land meets the legal definition of contaminated land.

What remains uncertain

The blood results show that PFAS were present in the tested residents. They cannot diagnose an illness, predict whether an individual will become ill, or establish that the Hillhouse site caused a particular result. Wyre Council's health information says PFAS biomonitoring is not currently recommended through the NHS or private blood tests because a result is unlikely to provide clear clinical answers. It also says the evidence that interventions to lower PFAS levels improve health outcomes remains uncertain.

Leigh Day partner Sarah Moore called the results ‘hugely concerning’ and said they showed contamination has ‘a human impact, not just an environmental one’. AGC Chemicals Europe told the Guardian that it understood residents' concerns but had not been given the testing data. The company said the area had hosted chemical manufacturing for more than a century under various operators, and that the wider investigation was still ongoing without a formal determination of land contamination under Part 2A of the Environmental Protection Act.

A separate local health-data review, summarised by Wyre Council, found no evidence of a kidney-cancer cluster or an environmental association and concluded that no further cluster investigation was warranted at that stage. That population-level review does not settle the questions raised by these residents' blood results. The environmental investigation continues, leaving the extent and routes of local exposure unresolved.