A Kidney-Cancer Cluster Sits Next to Hillhouse. The Council Called It Chance.
'Cancer cluster' is a defined term: more cases of one cancer than expected, in one area, over a set period. By that definition, the Council's own kidney-cancer report found one next to the Hillhouse site, more than double the expected cases. It then set it aside, chiefly because the risk did not fall away with distance. But the site's own soil contamination does not fall away with distance either.
From Lancashire’s Health Cell kidney-cancer report on the Hillhouse area.
From the Council’s own kidney-cancer report and the Environment Agency’s own soil data. Both are public; figures and sources are given so you can check them.
“Cancer cluster” sounds like a verdict. It is not. It is a plain definition, used by cancer agencies everywhere: a greater-than-expected number of the same cancer, among people in one area, over a set period. It is not a status a body awards, the way land is formally designated “contaminated.” It is a description. Either the numbers fit it or they don’t.
Next to the Hillhouse site, the numbers fit it.
The Council found the excess
Lancashire’s Health Cell looked at kidney cancer around the AGC (formerly ICI) plant at Hillhouse, Thornton-Cleveleys. In the small area right beside the site, it counted 14 cases where 6 were expected over 2003 to 2022. That is an incidence ratio of 218, more than double the expected number. The range around it (a 95% confidence interval of 119 to 367) stays above 100 even at its lowest, which means the excess is statistically significant, more cases than chance alone would explain. The report says so itself.
By the standard definition, that is a cancer cluster.
Its own test was met
The report set itself a test. Its second stage asked “whether the observed pattern could, in principle, be linked to a plausible environmental exposure pathway, considering biological plausibility.” Both halves are met. PFOA and kidney cancer have a recognised link, described by the C8 Science Panel, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the IARC cancer agency alike. And the exposure is not hypothetical: PFOA is in the soil beside the site, measured by the Environment Agency’s own contractors.
Then it set the cluster aside
Having found the excess and acknowledged the pathway, the report concluded there was “no evidence of a kidney cancer cluster, no indication of an environmental association.” Its grounds: small numbers, the false excesses that appear when many areas are compared at once, and, above all, “no evidence of an increasing gradient of risk in relation to proximity to the site.” In plain terms, the cases did not fade with distance from the plant, so, it reasons, they don’t look like the plant’s doing.
The distance argument does not hold here
That reasoning assumes contamination fades steadily as you move away. This contamination does not. The Environment Agency’s own soil readings peak not at the fence but further out, and in one direction. The highest, 181 micrograms per kilo, is 700 metres to the south-east, higher than the reading at 500 metres. The lowest is to the west. The contamination is directional, not radial.
And the one small area with the significant cancer excess sits in that same south-east direction, over the soil peak.
A test built on distance cannot see a pattern that runs by direction. Rule the cases out because they don’t fade with distance, when the contamination itself doesn’t fade with distance, and you have ruled them out with the wrong instrument.
We are not saying the site caused these cancers
We are not. Most apparent clusters, once investigated, turn out to be chance. Of hundreds examined over the years, only a handful are ever linked to any exposure, and a clear cause is rarer still. This proves nothing about any individual case, and we make no such claim.
What we are saying is narrower, and it is the report’s own logic turned back on it. A cluster, by the definition, is there. The plausible, documented exposure pathway the report asked for is there. And the main reason it gave for setting the cluster aside, that the risk doesn’t fall with distance, does not hold for a contaminant whose own levels don’t fall with distance.
What we are asking
Two things would let anyone test the alignment properly, and the Council and the Environment Agency hold both: the full table of cancer figures for each small area, and the map coordinates of the soil samples. We are asking for both, openly, and will publish whatever comes back.
How we know: the excess, the confidence interval and the “no cluster” conclusion are in the Lancashire Health Cell kidney-cancer assessment (June 2026); the soil readings and their directions are in the WSP Phase 2 and Phase 3 reports for the Environment Agency, published by Wyre Council. The PFOA-kidney link is the C8 Science Panel (2012), IARC (2023) and the US EPA (2024). The map is a directional schematic, not a scaled GIS overlay: it places each point by its reported direction and distance band, and says so on its face.