Read the full article Daniel Shailer on Fair Isle (The Guardian).
“When the wind picks up on Fair Isle, Britain’s most remote inhabited island, puffs of seafoam start to drift across fields like tumbleweed. The pale yellow blobs are ubiquitous enough to hold their own place in the island’s mythology: known as the butter churned by a local troll, Lukki Minni.
‘When the Atlantic gets going, foam covers the whole island,’ says Tommy Hyndman, an artist who moved to the Fair Isle from upstate New York two decades ago. ‘Your windows get caked and your plants all die from the salt.’
As well as a familiar feature of rough weather, scientists now think seafoam and seaspray might hold the answer to a Fair Isle mystery. In 2024, utility data revealed that the wild outpost known for knitting and rare birds has higher levels of toxic Pfas – ‘forever chemicals’ – than any other public drinking water in Scotland, despite there being no obvious industrial sources on the island.
The Guardian obtained readings for the individual Pfas behind that record, as well as documents from Fair Isle’s airstrip and community fire station. Half a dozen scientists – from Stockholm to Texas, by way of Liverpool and Aberdeen – reviewed the Guardian’s water data and agreed that Fair Isle’s forever-chemical fingerprint matched the mix of individual Pfas that probably arrived in seaspray and foam.”…