Read the full article by Pippa Neill (The Guardian)
“‘Everything I wanted was finally coming to fruition. A house, a change of job and getting married,’ says Liz Hurst, looking out to sea on a hot evening in Blackpool.
‘But then all of a sudden, everything was put on hold.’ Fifteen years ago, Hurst was diagnosed with kidney cancer aged 32.
‘The doctors told me they didn’t know why I’d got it, they said it was very uncommon for somebody of my age and sex,’ she says.
Last month, a government commissioned study found there was higher-than-expected rates of kidney cancer in the vicinity of the AGC Chemicals Europe manufacturing plant in Thornton-Cleveleys, a town to the north of Blackpool where Hurst lived until recently.
Between the 1950s and 2012, the facility emitted an estimated 49 tonnes of the carcinogenic chemical Pfoa.
Pfoa – perfluorooctanoic acid – is a type of Pfas that international research has linked to kidney cancer. Pfas, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are commonly known as forever chemicals because they do not break down in the environment. The Thornton-Cleveleys factory, which AGC Chemicals Europe bought in 1999, used Pfoa to make PTFE – polytetrafluoroethylene – another type of forever chemical used to make non-stick coatings. Pfoa was banned globally in 2020.”…