'No Indication of a Link': What the Lancashire County Council Health Cell Compared, and What It Did Not Test
On 15 June 2026, the Lancashire County Council Health Cell's public statement said there is 'no evidence of a kidney cancer cluster and no indication of a link to environmental contamination' around the Hillhouse site. The same statement says the environmental information was used 'for contextual comparison only and not to assess individual exposure or causation.' The report behind it asked whether the pattern of cases could plausibly be linked to an environmental exposure pathway, and compared the distribution of cases with soil and air-dispersion data. It did not establish or test causation, and says so.
From the Lancashire County Council Health Cell’s public update on the Hillhouse kidney-cancer investigation.
Every quotation below is from the Health Cell’s own statement of 15 June 2026, published on Lancashire County Council’s news site, unless it is marked as from the Health Cell’s report.
On 15 June 2026, the Lancashire County Council Health Cell, a multi-agency group, issued a public update on kidney cancer around the AGC (formerly ICI) chemical plant at Hillhouse, Thornton-Cleveleys. It gives two conclusions and, two paragraphs earlier, says what the environmental information was used for. The report it summarises sets out what was tested, and what was not.
The two conclusions
The statement says there is “no evidence of a kidney cancer cluster and no indication of a link to environmental contamination,” and “no alignment between cancer cases and environmental data such as soil contamination or air dispersion patterns.”
Read on its own, “no indication of a link to environmental contamination” can be taken to mean that the site has been tested as a cause of these cancers and ruled out.
What the environmental information was used for
The statement also says what the environmental information was used for: “Environmental information was used for contextual comparison only and not to assess individual exposure or causation.”
The report behind the statement sets out what was tested. Its second stage had two purposes: “whether the observed excess of kidney cancer cases existed during 2003-2022 and when compared with alternative comparators”, and “whether the observed pattern could, in principle, be linked to a plausible environmental exposure pathway, considering biological plausibility and known limitations of the available data.” The Environment Agency’s soil, air-dispersion and emissions information “was used to assess whether broad spatial patterns in cancer incidence were consistent with known contamination profiles or emission patterns”; the soil data “were used descriptively”, and their visual comparison with maps of the cases “was undertaken for contextual understanding only and does not provide evidence of a causal link between soil contamination and cancer incidence”. The report also says it “does not constitute a formal human health risk assessment, nor does it seek to establish causality.”
So the Health Cell did ask whether the pattern of cases could plausibly be linked to an environmental exposure pathway, and it compared the distribution of cases with the soil and air-dispersion data. It did not establish or test causation, and it says so. “No indication of a link to environmental contamination” rests on that comparison of patterns, which the report describes as descriptive and contextual, together with the distance analysis and the review of tumour types: the report says “The statistical analyses, mapping and tumour characteristic review did not identify evidence of a geographically localised or statistically robust excess of kidney cancer cases”, and concludes there was “no indication of an environmental association”. The statement gives the same grounds: dispersed cases, “no evidence of increased risk linked to proximity to the site”, no alignment with the environmental data, and “no similarities in tumour types that would suggest a common cause”. It is not a finding that the contamination was tested as a cause and excluded.
And “no cluster” is a conclusion, not a raw finding
The other conclusion, “no evidence of a kidney cancer cluster,” is not a plain count either. The US National Cancer Institute defines a cancer cluster as “the occurrence of a greater than expected number of cancer cases among a group of people in a defined geographic area over a specific time period” (NCI). In a small area south-east of the site, the Health Cell’s report gives 14 kidney cancers where 6 were expected on England’s rates, an excess the Health Cell “deemed to be statistically significant”. Compared with other small areas, the report says the rate there “was statistically similar to those in most other LSOAs, although it was higher than the England average”. By the NCI’s definition, which is not the report’s, the numbers fit a cluster when compared with England. The report gives several grounds for its conclusion: no consistent spatial or temporal pattern, no increasing gradient of risk with proximity to the site, no clustering of cases close to it, no alignment with air-dispersion or soil data, geographically dispersed cases, no similarities in tumour characteristics suggesting a common cause, and the random variation expected from many small comparisons. We set out in full, in a separate piece, the report’s findings in its own words, and why one of them, the absence of a distance gradient, is shared by the soil: within 1 km, WSP’s Phase 2 and 3 garden results show no clear correlation between concentration and distance.
Both lie to the south-east
The statement also says there is “no alignment” between the cancer cases and the soil contamination. The report compared the distribution of the cases with the soil results. It maps the cancer ratio for each small area, but not where within an area the cases were: maps of their postcode locations “cannot be presented in this report as they are potentially individual identifiable”. So that comparison cannot be repeated from the published documents. What the published figures do show is direction. WSP’s Phase 3 report for the Environment Agency records soil concentrations peaking at “c. 120° (south-east) and 280° (west-north-west) rotation”. The south-eastern of the two small areas with an excess against England lies south-east of the site, and by our measurement from WSP’s own map about 90% of the area WSP treated as “potential higher deposition” lies inside it. The highest reading in WSP’s combined garden dataset, 181 micrograms per kilo, is also to the south-east, about 630 metres from the facility. The small-area excess and WSP’s highest readings point the same way.
Corrected 26 September 2026: this post previously used a schematic map. In the smaller versions shown on some screens, its legend still gave a “Dutch screening value” of 3.8 µg/kg, a figure withdrawn from this site because it could not be sourced; it placed the highest soil reading at 700 m, where WSP’s own distance plot puts it at about 630 m; and it said the peak “rises from 500m to 700m”, which WSP’s report does not support (it finds no clear correlation between concentration and distance). The map is now drawn on satellite imagery, from WSP’s own georeferenced map and the official boundaries of the two small areas. The text above is corrected to match.
We are not saying the site caused these cancers
We are not, and no one has shown it did. What we are saying is narrower. The statement’s “no indication of a link to environmental contamination” rests in part on environmental information that, in the statement’s own words, “was used for contextual comparison only and not to assess individual exposure or causation”, and in part on the distance analysis and the review of tumour types, in an assessment that, in the report’s words, does not “seek to establish causality”. And at the level of the published figures, the small-area cancer excess and WSP’s highest soil readings for the Environment Agency both lie south-east of the site.
What we are asking
Whether the contamination caused any of these cancers was not tested by this assessment: the report says it does not “seek to establish causality”. We are asking the Health Cell to say plainly that “no indication of a link” is not a finding on causation, and whether any body will carry out or commission an assessment that does test it. We will publish whatever comes back.
How we know: quotations are from the Multi-Agency Health Cell’s public update, “Update on investigation: Hillhouse Technology Enterprise Zone - Thornton-Cleveleys”, Lancashire County Council News, 15 June 2026 (checked against the live page on 14 October 2026), except those from the report. The soil readings and their directions are the WSP Phase 2 and Phase 3 reports for the Environment Agency. The kidney-cancer excess, 14 cases against 6 expected on England’s rates in the area south-east of the site, the comparison with other small areas, the purposes of the second stage, the use of the environmental data and the grounds for the report’s conclusion are the Health Cell’s own kidney-cancer assessment, v1.0 Final, last reviewed 12 May 2026, published by Wyre Council. The cluster definition is the US National Cancer Institute’s.