Changelog

How we correct

Corrections to a published claim are logged here, with the date they were made and the pages they affected. We now aim to add a dated note to every corrected page; earlier entries show that was not always done: one entry below records a correction, made in early August 2026, that went unrecorded here until more than a month later. Where the error was ours, an error of fact, attribution, sourcing or reading, we label it a Correction. Where our reporting was accurate when we wrote it and the facts have since moved on, such as a closure being confirmed or a consultation closing, we label it an Update instead. New pages and posts are listed separately, as are changes to the site itself, such as design, navigation or images, that did not change what a page claims. The original wording of this log, before it was reorganised on 26 September 2026, is kept in full at the changelog archive.

At a glance

Date Corrections Updates New Site changes Main change
4 October 2026 21 3 2 0 Hostile-reader review of the FAQ: twenty-one corrections of wording, attribution and citation; who runs the site now stated at the top of the FAQ; two new FAQ answers
1 October 2026 5 1 0 0 Second adversarial review of the live site: fire article, permit-breach table, accounts wording, EEA-NH4 figure and our own self-description corrected; current PFOA generation added
30 September 2026 4 5 1 0 Open requests table; FAQ and criticisms rebuilt on the published science; who runs the site disclosed; EEA-NH4 discharge figure dated to 2019; two articles corrected
29 September 2026 0 2 0 0 Council will not sample on request (new FAQ answer); requests to the EA and Wyre on the model and sampling design
28 September 2026 4 5 1 0 Status: HSE reported to the ICO; FOI to Lancashire County Council; kidney cancer posts; timeline corrections (COMAH tier, Jameson Road dates); Guardian byline; current PFOA generation added
27 September 2026 10 0 9 0 Zones map withdrawn; council and permit wording corrected across pages; new post and seven answers on responses to the blood results
26 September 2026 10 1 7 3 Soil map and timeline redrawn; distance and wording corrections; changelog reorganised
25 September 2026 10 8 1 2 Second accuracy review: own errors fixed; closure and blood results added
17 September 2026 6 0 0 0 Corrections to the toxic-gas post and the March investigation update
11 September 2026 10 4 0 0 Full accuracy sweep: three own errors logged first, then wider updates
3 September 2026 1 1 0 0 Groundwater section expanded; an internal notes error also corrected
14 August 2026 2 0 0 2 Two citation errors corrected; a third link and form fixed
2 August 2026 6 0 0 0 Major correction pass: W1 discharge figure, citations, attribution, several figures
23 July 2026 1 0 0 0 Precision fix to “three-month fire” wording; no claim changed
9 March 2026 0 0 1 0 New post: BBC filming confirmed; Leigh Day town hall announced
8 March 2026 0 2 3 1 New posts on the 1km zone, residential testing and the PFAS plan
6 March 2026 0 15 0 3 Navigation and theme overhaul; Part 2A conclusion for Occupation Road
25 February 2026 2 0 0 3 Cancer-stat headline corrected; dark-theme fixes; more sources added
18 February 2026 16 0 0 8 Foundational rewrite; several more sourcing corrections and citations restored

4 October 2026

Corrections

We had the FAQ read as an opponent would read it: once for what it implies, once against each source, once for overstatement. These are the errors that review found.

  • The closure answer said “the questions we are putting to” the Environment Agency and AGC. They have not been sent yet; the Open questions page shows both as “Preparing”. It now says “intend to put”. The error was published earlier the same day.
  • The food answer said “PFAS detected in 287 of 291 soil samples”. The figure is for PFOA, as The Numbers and the rest of the FAQ say. Corrected.
  • The FAQ said UKHSA “recommends against” individual blood testing. UKHSA’s words are that it “is not currently recommended for individuals through the NHS or private blood tests”. The FAQ now quotes the guidance and no longer says it “runs counter” to the US National Academies.
  • The FAQ and Common criticisms said Wyre Council “said” blood testing would be “not appropriate”. The council’s FOI reply relayed advice from UKHSA and Lancashire County Council. Both pages now say so.
  • EEA-NH4 in residents’ blood was listed under “What we know” in the answer about attributing contamination to a source. The figure (10 of 49) comes from press reports, not published data, and a blood result does not show where exposure came from. It is now under “Open questions” with that stated.
  • The tap water answer gave “up to 20,624 ng/L” for “the discharge”. The paper gives one range, 891 to 20,624 ng/L, for three points together (a discharge beside a former ICI effluent lagoon, a land drain and a leaking pipe), sampled on one day, 12 February 2023, and attributes the PFOA to use at the plant between 1955 and 2012. The answer now gives the range, the date and the authors’ attribution, and no longer calls it “industrial discharge”.
  • The FAQ said AGC “used PFOA until 2012” without the later official statement. A written answer from Defra and the Environment Agency on 17 April 2026 says a small amount of PFOA is still generated by the current process. Our 1 October update added that to other pages and missed the FAQ.
  • The workers answer. It said we had found no blood testing “whether by ICI, AGC or a public body”; it now says we have found no published results, and that this describes what we searched. A sentence pointing to 1980s papers in the ToxicDocs archive has been removed: we had not read them, and our rule is that a claim we cannot source does not go on the page. The paragraph on other companies’ plants is now labelled as not describing Hillhouse. The figure of 756 UK workers is now cited to the IARC volume that gives it (Monograph 110, Table 2.1).
  • The private soil testing answer attributed a depth finding to Phase 2 and to The Numbers. The statement is from the WSP Phase 3 report, which is now quoted.
  • Three pages said 8,568 people “took part in 2025” in blood testing around 3M’s plant at Zwijndrecht (FAQ, The Numbers, one post). The Flemish health department says 8,568 gave a blood sample and that group results were published on 18 March 2025. All three now say that.
  • About said the site “has no commercial or funding relationship with any law firm”. The person who runs it is a client of Leigh Day, which the same page states two sentences later. The sentence now says the site receives no funding from, and has no commercial arrangement with, any law firm, and points to the disclosure.
  • The blood-testing answer commented on whether the Council Leader’s call for blood tests and the council’s FOI reply were “consistent”. That was our comment, not a fact. The answer now gives the two dated statements and no more.
  • The cancer classification was stated without its limits. The FAQ now gives IARC’s basis for Group 1 (sufficient animal evidence, limited human evidence, strong mechanistic evidence) and IARC’s statement that the classification “does not indicate the level of cancer risk associated with exposure at different levels or in different scenarios”.
  • The half-life sentence went further than its source. It said repeated exposure “can keep the amount in the body up or increase it”, from a study of 26 retired workers. It now says what the study shows, and that it does not show what is happening in residents.
  • The 69.4% blood figure appeared in the FAQ without the caveats Start here carries. The FAQ now says the 20 ng/ml level is a prompt for screening and not a diagnosis, and that the US bands apply to a total of seven PFAS, so the figure may not be PFOA alone.
  • The property answer made two statements with no source: that sellers “have disclosure obligations regarding known material issues”, and that “no official property blight designation has been made”. Both are removed (the first also from Common criticisms). The answer now states what is on the public record and refers readers to a conveyancing solicitor.
  • The “Not currently in place” list named ambient air monitoring, a requirement to cease EEA-NH4 discharge and a residential remediation programme, without saying what we had searched. It now says what we have not found and where, and “requirement to cease EEA-NH4 discharge” is removed as our opinion, not a record.
  • Contaminated land wording. One line said the Environment Agency concluded Occupation Road “meets the statutory criteria for formal classification as Contaminated Land”. The council’s wording is that it meets the criteria “to be determined” as contaminated land. The FAQ now uses that throughout.
  • The food advice list called “wash and peel” new advice of 5 March 2026 and attributed hand-washing to the FSA. Wash and peel was continuing advice, raised beds was the addition, and the garden and hand-washing advice is UKHSA’s. Corrected, and UKHSA’s advice that gardens can be used as normal is now included.
  • The tap water answer said mains water is “supplied and treated” by United Utilities and gave no source for “treated”. It now says who supplies it and that we hold no PFAS results for local tap water.
  • Open questions: the fire question to AGC described the site as “major-hazard”. That was our wording as put to AGC. The page now says so, and that the site’s status under the major-hazard regulations is not confirmed.

New

  • A new FAQ answer: Is it only the soil that is contaminated? It sets out, with the source for each, what has been reported in soil, home-grown produce and eggs, discharge water at the site, air samples at Hazelrigg and residents’ blood, and what is not known about what any level means for one person. The air figures come from the primary paper (Dalmijn et al., ES&T 2025: 21 samples, 11 June to 24 September 2021), which the timeline and criticisms pages had cited only in summary. Added because the question is asked often and the evidence was spread across several pages.
  • A new FAQ answer: What happens when the factory closes? It sets out AGC’s closure statements and the Wyre Council Leader’s comment, what the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 and GOV.UK guidance say about surrendering a permit and who decides, and where we searched for a published decommissioning or surrender plan and found none as of 4 October 2026. Two matching questions are listed as Preparing on Open questions.

Updates

  • Who runs the site is now stated at the top of the FAQ, including that he is a Leigh Day client and could benefit financially if a claim succeeds. Leigh Day’s contact details now appear only on the Leigh Day page; the FAQ links there.
  • AGC’s on-site investigation now has its source in the FAQ: AGC’s own Site Investigation page, quoted. The Environment Agency dispersion model is now described as the WSP report describes it, with a note that we have asked for it.
  • The Wyre Council statement on the closure now has its source. The FAQ said the council had “stated that the announcement does not change the investigation” without a citation. The statement is the Council Leader’s response to AGC’s 13 July proposal, reported by the Blackpool Gazette on 16 July 2026: “The announcement does not affect the ongoing investigation, which is being progressed in accordance with the relevant regulatory processes.” The two closure sentences in the FAQ’s operator and current-actions answers now link to the new answer instead of repeating it.

1 October 2026

Corrections

  • The fire article said the reporting of the fire to regulators was unconfirmed. Our own Open questions page already showed that the Environment Agency’s record, disclosed on 2 September 2026, confirms it was notified on the evening of the fire. Our 30 September correction repeated the error. The article now says so, and only the HSE’s confirmation is outstanding.

  • The Numbers said the thermal oxidiser was “offline 43 days” and presented the permit-breach figures as “indicative”. The Environment Agency’s Compliance Assessment Report BU5453IY/0572280 records the oxidiser offline across four periods totalling about 56 days; the 43 days were invalid monitoring days, a separate breach. The table now gives each figure as the report records it, including that the particulate limit is a half-hour average and that the Agency scored each breach as category CCS3 (minor environmental impact), and cites the report.

  • The accounts article said “by 2022 the site was making a £10m operating profit” and invited readers to “decide why” AGC said one thing publicly and another in its filings. The £10m is a company-wide figure, and the closing sentence went further than the accounts do. Both now say only what the accounts record.

  • Two posts (HSE consultation, two permits) gave the EEA-NH4 discharge as “793 kg per year”. The Environment Agency’s report says about 783 kg, for 2019. Both now match the rest of the site.

  • Sources and evidence described the site in ways that were not quite true. It said all source documents are public (Leigh Day’s handout to participants is not), that the site uses no tracking cookies (Google Analytics sets them if you accept the cookie banner), and that unverifiable claims are “qualified or not included” (our rule is that they are not included). All three now say what the site actually does.

Updates

  • Current PFOA generation. The Numbers and two earlier posts said we had no evidence of any recent PFOA release. A written answer from Defra and the Environment Agency, dated 17 April 2026, says a small amount is still generated by the current manufacturing process, with a release to air that AGC puts at a few tens of grams a year. Those pages now say so and link to the timeline.

30 September 2026

Corrections

  • The EEA-NH4 discharge figure was given as a current rate, “around 800 kg a year”, and credited to different sources on different pages. The primary source is the Environment Agency’s April 2023 risk evaluation, which used AGC’s own monitoring data: about 783 kg discharged to the River Wyre in 2019, which the Agency assumed was representative of current operations (p.68). We have not found a later published figure. The homepage, The Numbers, Start here, Sources and evidence, the FAQ, What is PFAS, Take action, the timeline and two earlier posts now give the 2019 figure and its source.

  • The accounts article said the directors’ risk list showed the closure was about “PFAS regulation and the cost of environmental compliance”, not losses. A list of principal risks is not a statement of reasons for closing a plant, and AGC has not said which risk decided it. The article now says only what the accounts record, with a dated note.

  • The fire article’s headline said “the community was never told what had burned”, and the article said “the regulators knew what had burned”. We can only say what the public record we have found shows, and the reporting to regulators and the absence of enforcement action are AGC’s account, not yet confirmed by the regulators. The headline and those passages now say so, with a dated note.

  • Common criticisms said the highest soil readings were to the south-east of the site. The Phase 3 report’s data shows the highest concentrations in two directions, south-east and west-north-west. Corrected in place with a dated note.

New

  • A new answer on “Let sleeping dogs lie”: why not knowing does not reduce exposure or risk, with the measured egg and produce findings, PFOA’s half-life in the blood, the C8 Science Panel’s findings, the US National Academies’ testing recommendation, and how the contaminated-land law identifies who is responsible.

Updates

  • About now sets out how the site works: primary sources first, measured kept apart from estimated, no claim without a source, pages checked before publication, errors public, and what would change our view. It also links to published research by the person who runs the site.

  • We now say on the site who runs it, and that he is a client of Leigh Day in its investigation of a possible claim. He is named on About, which also says he could benefit financially if a claim succeeds. The homepage, the footer, Start here, the Leigh Day page, Sources and evidence, the FAQ and Take action now say the site is run by a Leigh Day client and link to About. Where those pages said the site was “not connected to” or “not affiliated with” Leigh Day or any legal firm, they now say it is not part of Leigh Day or any law firm and receives no funding from one. The site’s position has not changed: it is not part of Leigh Day, receives nothing from it and gives no legal advice.

  • The FAQ and Common criticisms now include more of the published science alongside official statements. Added: the US National Academies’ 2022 recommendation that doctors offer PFAS blood testing to people in contaminated areas, set beside UKHSA’s advice not to test; the C8 Science Panel’s six probable links; IARC’s Group 1 classification; a 3.8-year average half-life of PFOA in the blood, estimated in 26 retired production workers; EFSA’s intake limit in nanograms; the site permit’s lack of any PFAS limit on air emissions; and airborne PFOA found 20 km away. Removed: an unsourced line saying discharge water is diluted before abstraction; “no public health warning has been issued” as a statement about tap water; and closing instructions to follow official advice or check the council’s website.

  • Open questions now opens with a table of every formal request still open: who holds it, when it was filed, the body’s own reference, when a reply is due, and where it stands. Reference numbers added for the Environment Agency (EIR2026/46693), Wyre Council (FOI003977) and Lancashire County Council (FOI1643) requests, and the Information Commissioner’s Office case number for the complaint about HSE (IC-573871-P5Y8). A planned request to the Environment Agency on PFOA released since 2012 is listed as Preparing.

29 September 2026

Updates

  • Wyre Council says it will not sample gardens on request. Its reply of 29 September 2026 says “the law we are working under does not allow us to choose sampling locations in response to individual requests”. New FAQ answer: Can I ask the council to test my garden soil?
  • Two information requests sent, both public on WhatDoTheyKnow: to the Environment Agency for its air dispersion model (AQMAU-C2478-RP02), the sampling design and the sample locations, and to Wyre Council for the law it relies on and how properties were selected. Recorded on Open questions.

28 September 2026

Corrections

  • The timeline said the site was designated upper-tier under COMAH in 2003. We could not find a source for that. HSE’s current establishment list shows AGC Hillhouse as lower-tier, as the fire investigation already stated. The sentence has been replaced with a dated note on the timeline.
  • The timeline contradicted itself on when AGC stopped sending PFOA-containing waste to Jameson Road landfill. A heading said 2012, its own text said “until at least 2014”, and a separate 2014 entry cited “Wyre Council records” we cannot trace. An annotated index of Environment Agency documents released under EIR records that AGC’s filter cake, which contains low levels of PFOA, moved from Jameson Road to Whitemoss landfill in February 2014. Both entries corrected on the timeline, with dated notes.
  • The Evidence page misattributed the Guardian’s 24 February 2023 article to the wrong authors. It was written by Rachel Salvidge and Leana Hosea. Corrected on Evidence.
  • The Evidence page gave the 12,000 ng/L PFOA effluent reading without its sample year. The Guardian reports it was measured in 2021. Added on Evidence, with a dated note. The same entry, and the timeline, described the EU’s 100 ng/L drinking water value as a limit for total PFAS; it applies to the sum of 20 specified PFAS (the separate “PFAS Total” limit is 500 ng/L). Both corrected; The Numbers already had it right.

Updates

  • The Health and Safety Executive has been reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office for not answering our request of 5 August about the October 2024 fire. HSE’s own deadline was 4 September; the request was 16 working days overdue when reported. Updated on Open questions, the timeline and the fire investigation.
  • A Freedom of Information request has gone to Lancashire County Council for the figures behind its kidney cancer assessment, including the comparison populations used in its second stage. A reply is due by 26 October 2026. Recorded on Open questions.
  • AGC’s current, unintended generation of PFOA is now on the timeline. Two entries: AGC’s statement to the ENDS Report in September 2025 that a “very limited amount” of PFOA is still “inadvertently generated” in lubricant-grade manufacturing, and a written answer from Defra and the Environment Agency in April 2026 that PFOA “is being released from historic and current activities”, with AGC reporting a release to air of “a few tens of grams per year”. The site previously described PFOA only as used until 2012.
  • The printable leaflet now says PFOA has not entirely stopped. One sentence added to section 1: AGC’s statement that a “very limited amount” still forms unintentionally, and the Defra and Environment Agency answer that AGC’s own figures show a release to air of “a few tens of grams per year”. Nothing else in the leaflet changed.
  • Status notes added to the four kidney cancer posts: the cluster, the assessment’s questions, “no concern” and the council statement. The assessment post also explains why the comparison populations matter: against a comparison rate about 19% above England’s, the headline result would no longer be statistically significant.

New

  • A sharper answer to “Everyone has PFAS in their blood anyway”. It now makes two points: the amount is what matters, and here it is high; and the risk rises with the level however common it is, with the US guidance bands set out. It adds a comparison: smoking was no safer when most adults smoked, and high levels everywhere would be a reason for more concern, not less. The figures are unchanged.

27 September 2026

Two corrections found while researching how far the contamination reaches; a new post and six new answers on the responses to the blood results from UKHSA, Lancashire’s Director of Public Health and AGC Chemicals Europe; and a new FAQ answer about the people who worked at the plant.

Corrections

Found in an adversarial review of the Common Criticisms and FAQ pages, each checked against the source before it was changed.

  • We overstated what Wyre Council said about blood testing, on six pages. We wrote that the council said results “would be uninterpretable” and that testing “would cause additional distress”. Its 6 March 2026 response, relaying advice from UKHSA and Lancashire County Council, says biomonitoring was “not appropriate in the context of this investigation”, that “individual results are often uninterpretable”, and that uncertainty in interpreting them “can lead to additional distress for residents”. Corrected on the FAQ, Common criticisms, Health, the blood test results, biomonitoring and March investigation posts.

  • We said the site’s permit has no PFAS monitoring requirement on any air emission point. The July 2017 permit (EPR/BU5453IY, variation V004) lists EEA-NH4 for monitoring at one point, A5, with no limit set and a frequency “to be agreed with the Environment Agency”. It sets no PFAS emission limit. Corrected on The Numbers, the Timeline and Common criticisms. The separate water discharge consents are unaffected.

  • A 700 m figure survived our 26 September correction. The “most gardens” answer on Common criticisms still put the highest Phase 3 reading at about 700 m. WSP’s distance plot puts it at about 630 m. Corrected, and the answer no longer calls the council’s summary a description of “shallow samples” only.

  • The FAQ said authorities in the Netherlands set up population biomonitoring, and that none of the programmes cited distress as a reason to withhold testing. We have verified programmes in Belgium and the USA only, and we cannot support the second claim. Replaced with the verified figures.

  • The FAQ listed drinking water PFAS testing as not in place. Wyre Council has said PFAS monitoring is carried out at the sources and treatment works supplying the area. Removed from the list.

  • Three unsourced statements were live, marked “[source to be confirmed]”. AGC’s position on PFOS, on the FAQ and The Numbers, is removed; both now say only that the source of PFOS found in eggs has not been identified. A “100-300 years” persistence figure for lead on What is PFAS is replaced: lead is an element and does not degrade. The Numbers also no longer dates the estate’s industrial use to “the 1950s”.

  • The FAQ overstated attribution. It said permit discharges “can be attributed” to fluoropolymer production and that source attribution “would require investigation that has not been conducted”. Reworded to what the evidence shows, noting AGC’s on-site investigation.

  • Smaller precision fixes: the US 20 ng/ml threshold is now described as applying to a combined total of seven PFAS; the egg advice now includes the advice on laying birds; the FAQ’s wash-and-peel, Phase 3 property and untested-foods wording now says only what the sources show; the Phase 3 report is no longer described as unpublished.

  • We withdrew the map comparing restriction zones at seven sites. It showed each country’s zone as circles at the same scale, but most of its figures could not be traced to a regulatory source, and its caption said those sources were still “to be compiled”. Checking them, the Netherlands advice line is 1 km, not 4 km then 10 km. The zones in Italy and at Parkersburg in the USA followed water supplies, not distances. The Belgian zones were simplified and have since changed. We found no source for the Swedish or Danish figures. The Italian panel was also centred near Padova, about 40 km from Trissino, where the plant stood. On The Numbers it is replaced by a table of what authorities did around five other sites, with a source for each row. The map of a 1 km buffer around the Hillhouse estate is unaffected.

  • We said Phase 2 soil testing covered only council-owned land, on the Take Action page. That describes Phase 1. We corrected the same error in the 1 km zone post on 26 September, but it had not been fixed here. Corrected on Take Action, with a dated note.

New

26 September 2026

An independent review found three places where our wording went further than the evidence. A review of every graphic on the site then found that a correction we logged on 25 September had not fully taken effect, and led to several more corrections checked against the WSP reports themselves. The kidney-cancer and soil map and the timeline graphic were redrawn, and this changelog was reorganised into a consistent layout.

Corrections

  • We said AGC’s accounts “disprove” its “four years of losses”. The accounts show profits for the whole company in three of those four years. AGC says the losses were at the Hillhouse manufacturing unit alone and has not published that unit’s figures, so its claim about the plant is unverified rather than disproved. The article now says that, its headline reads “Its Accounts Show Profits in Three of Them”, and it carries a correction note.
  • A headline said other contamination routes from the site were “never assessed”. The Phase 3 report mentions them once and never explains them; whether they have been assessed elsewhere is not known to us, as the article itself said. The headline now reads “Mentioned Once, Never Explained”, with a correction note.
  • What is PFAS said no long-term cancer studies had been completed for EEA-NH4. The Health and Safety Executive’s 2026 consultation relied on rat studies of 52 and 104 weeks and proposed classifying EEA-NH4 as a suspected carcinogen. The page now says so, with a correction note.
  • Our 25 September fix to the kidney-cancer and soil map did not fully take effect. We reported that the map’s legend no longer gave the withdrawn “Dutch screening value” of 3.8 µg/kg and that its cut-off key point was complete. That was true of the full-size image only. The site builds the smaller versions of an image from a second copy of the file, which we had not updated, so on the two posts that carry the map (A kidney-cancer cluster sits next to Hillhouse and the council’s “no link” statement) the smaller versions still showed the withdrawn figure, and a browser picks one of those depending on the screen. That map has now been replaced (see New below), the site now publishes each image from a single copy (see Site changes), and both posts carry a dated note.
  • We put the highest soil reading at “700 metres” from the site. 700 m is the outer limit of the zone WSP sampled to the south-east, not the distance of the reading. WSP’s own plot of concentration against distance puts the 181 µg/kg reading at about 630 m from the facility. Corrected on Start here, Common criticisms, the leaflet, and four posts: Phase 3 soil results, A kidney-cancer cluster sits next to Hillhouse, the council’s “no link” statement and questions about the kidney cancer assessment. The old map also said the peak “rises from 500m to 700m”, and one caption said the readings “rise with distance”; WSP’s report finds no clear correlation between concentration and distance, and the same plot shows readings above 100 µg/kg within 100 m of the facility as well as further out. Two posts described the small area with the cancer excess as coinciding with the south-eastern soil peak (“over the soil peak” in one, “in the south-east peak” in the other); they now give what we measured from WSP’s own map, that about 90% of the area WSP treated as “potential higher deposition” lies inside it, and refer to it as the south-eastern of the two small areas with a significant excess.
  • We said soil samples showed “elevated” or “raised” PFAS. The counts we quoted (187 of 199 samples in Phase 1, 287 of 291 in Phase 2) are the samples in which the laboratory detected PFOA above its limit of detection. That shows the chemical is present; it does not show it is above any safety or screening level, and WSP does not describe these counts as “elevated”. Corrected on the homepage, The Numbers, Evidence, Common criticisms, Start here and the leaflet. The Phase 3 post’s “204 of 208” and the other pages’ “287 of 291” are both WSP figures: the first counts garden samples only, the second includes public open space. Both are now labelled. (Egg results are still described as “elevated”, which is the council’s own word in its 12 August letter.)
  • We said Phase 2 soil testing covered only council-owned land. That describes Phase 1. Phase 2 sampled the gardens of 46 homes within 500 m, as well as public open space. Corrected in the 1km zone post, with a note. Three other pages implied the same by treating later testing as the first in gardens: The Numbers called February 2026 the “first confirmed residential property soil data” (it is when residents began receiving their own results), Start here said garden testing “followed” Phase 2, and the Phase 3 post said Phase 3 “extended testing into residential gardens” (it expanded it). All three now say so.
  • Our kidney-cancer and soil map put the second kidney-cancer area, in north Blackpool, “about 5 km” from the site. Measured on its official boundary, it is about 1.7 km from AGC’s permit boundary at its nearest edge and about 2.3 km centre to centre. The new map shows it in its true position. The timeline also described both areas as “beside the site”; it now says one is beside the site and one is in north Blackpool.
  • Our timeline said AGC announced the closure on 13 July. AGC’s announcement that day was a proposal to end production, subject to consultation with staff; the decision was announced on 14 September. The timeline entry now says so, as our FAQ and About pages already did.
  • The timeline’s overview graphic was out of date and wrong in places. It stopped in March 2026; it described Phase 2’s detection rate as samples “above PFOA limit”; it called the March 2026 allotment recommendation a “Part 2A designation”; it described the HSE consultation, which closed on 1 May, as current; and it placed the Environment Agency’s October 2023 notice to AGC after the November 2023 IARC classification. It has been redrawn (see New).

Updates

  • Evidence page. Its note on the Environment Agency’s 2023 report now adds the same point: that HSE consulted on a suspected-carcinogen classification in 2026.

New

  • A printable leaflet. A two-page A4 leaflet, on What To Do, replaces our withdrawn March 2026 handout. It condenses Start here, adds no new claims, dates anything that could change (“as at September 2026”), and links to Start here by QR code. It was re-issued the same day with two of the corrections above (the soil wording and the 630 m distance).
  • A new kidney-cancer and soil map, on satellite imagery. It replaces a schematic that placed soil zones by compass direction only. It shows AGC’s permit boundary and WSP’s “area of potential higher deposition”, both digitised from WSP’s own georeferenced map in its Phase 3 report (approximate, about ±10 m), with the official ONS boundaries of the two small areas where the kidney cancer assessment found a significant excess. No individual soil sampling locations are shown, because most are private gardens. On A kidney-cancer cluster sits next to Hillhouse and the council’s “no link” statement.
  • A redrawn timeline graphic, covering 1890 to September 2026, on the timeline. Every entry in it is sourced in the timeline below it.
  • A new answer on Common criticisms: “It’s only the new houses built on the old ICI land.” It sets out where the soil testing was done, which covered a far wider area than the site, and WSP’s discussion of potential airborne deposition.
  • Two new answers on the FAQ: why the blood testing was arranged through a law firm, and whether you can get your own garden soil tested.
  • A new answer on Common criticisms: “The 49 were hand-picked, so the results mean nothing.” It sets out who arranged the testing, what the available documents do not explain about how participants were selected, and what that does and does not limit.
  • A new FAQ answer: “I live more than 1 km away. Does this affect me?”

Site changes

  • This changelog was reorganised into a consistent layout, corrections, updates, new content and site changes, with a summary table at the top. The original wording is kept in full at the changelog archive. No entries were removed.
  • The site now has a proper “page not found” page (unknown addresses previously showed a normal page); the desktop menu fits on one row; the Evidence page’s four source cards sit in a two-by-two grid; and the cookie notice no longer covers the menu on phones.
  • Post images, including the smaller versions and the full-size image, are now all built from one copy of each file, and social-media previews use that same copy where it exists. This removes the duplicate that caused the problem above. The retired schematic map and the old timeline graphic were removed.

25 September 2026

A second accuracy review found two more of our own errors and brought several pages up to date, including the confirmed closure and the first blood-test results.

Corrections

  • We said we had written to the Health and Safety Executive. Our March investigation update said we had submitted a formal concern report to HSE and asked about its past involvement with the site. A search of our outbound correspondence found no record that either was sent. The sentence has been removed and the post carries a correction note. The same kind of error was corrected across the site on 11 September.
  • A withdrawn benchmark was still on four pages. The 11 September entry said every instance of the “Dutch screening value of 3.8 µg/kg”, a figure we could not source, had been replaced. It had not: it remained in one FAQ answer, the 1km zone post, the questions tracker, and the timeline (which gave the highest garden reading as “31.3 times the Dutch threshold”). All four now use the screening values WSP applies in its own reports for the Environment Agency: 1.4 µg/kg for allotment soil, 7.6 µg/kg for gardens growing vegetables. The highest reading at the property whose full results are published, 119 µg/kg, is about 16 times the garden value and 85 times the allotment value; the readings themselves are unchanged. The figure also survived inside an image: the legend of the kidney-cancer and soil map, on two posts, still read “Dutch screening value 3.8”, which a text search cannot see. The image’s legend now gives WSP’s values. Its cut-off “Key point” text is also now complete.
  • A supplier’s self-classification was presented as ECHA’s. The “What is PFAS” and “Evidence” pages said the European Chemicals Agency had classified EEA-NH4 as toxic to reproduction (Category 2); “The Numbers” attributed the same classification to “AGC’s own research”. The Category 2 entry is a self-classification by the chemical’s UK supplier, recorded in ECHA’s database; ECHA did not make it. The Environment Agency’s 2023 evaluation records that EEA-NH4 “does not have a harmonised classification under the EU CLP Regulation … nor a mandatory classification under UK CLP.” Another entry on our Evidence page already said this correctly, and the others now match it. The word “official” has been removed from the What is PFAS heading over this claim.
  • The homepage and The Numbers mislabelled 178 tonnes of PFOA as “discharged”. That figure is the total in AGC’s own mass balance and includes 63.3 tonnes supplied to customers as product, which is not a release to the environment. Our Evidence page and Timeline already said so, but The Numbers labelled the same total “discharged”, and that has now been corrected there too. The comparable release figures are about 145 tonnes (an Environment Agency estimate, air and water) and about 103 tonnes (AGC’s own figures); the homepage now gives the Agency’s estimate and notes AGC’s.
  • The 1km zone was described as measured from the “estate boundary”. That wording appears in no official document; it was our paraphrase. The Numbers and the 1km zone post now use Wyre Council’s published wording, “within 1km of the Hillhouse site”, and list four written wordings rather than three. The post’s headline said “Three Definitions” while its body listed four, so the headline now reads “Four Wordings”; its web address is unchanged. The post no longer calls the four descriptions inconsistent, since two come from the same council article; the point that stands is that none of them defines a measurement point. Our own map remains labelled as our interpretation, and that label now also sits beside the international comparison map, whose caption had wrongly described every panel on it as drawn by the authorities.
  • Occupation Road Allotments were said to have been “formally classified” or “designated” as contaminated land. What Wyre Council reported on 5 March 2026 is the Environment Agency’s conclusion that the site meets the Part 2A criteria; formal determination is the council’s own decision under the Act, and we have not confirmed from public records whether it has been made. The homepage, FAQ, What To Do, Evidence and Documents pages, and the residential-testing post, now say so, matching the fuller Evidence-page entry.
  • The homepage’s soil figure and egg advice were out of date. The soil figure now carries the correct year and source, and the egg advice now uses the published wording.
  • A post said Lorraine Beavers MP’s March question was her first intervention naming PFOA. The same post already recorded her naming PFOA in the House on 19 June 2025. It now gives both dates and makes no “first” claim, and carries a correction note.
  • A post on the Environment Agency’s 25 sites carried leftover text from a quotation we had removed because it could not be sourced. The heading and sentence, left over from that earlier edit, have been replaced with a note explaining the removal.
  • The 1km buffer map was mislabelled, and carried a marker it should not have had. The earlier version was titled as an “FSA/Wyre Council” map when it is our own interpretation, carried a location marker it should not have had, and gave an estimate of residents affected that we cannot source. It has been replaced with a map showing only the site outline and the buffer, labelled as our interpretation. No official map of the advisory zone has been published.

Updates

  • The closure is confirmed. AGC confirmed the closure on 14 September 2026 and said production is “expected to cease by 31 December 2026”. The About page previously said only that AGC had announced the closure with no date made public, and one FAQ answer still described only the July announcement; both now say so. The homepage is brought up to date more broadly too: it now includes the blood results and both allotment conclusions, alongside the closure. The Numbers’ comparison table and status line now also note the confirmed closure, and the post on AGC’s accounts carries a dated update and a new row in its record of events.
  • The first blood-test results are in. The post on blood testing in Bentham said no blood testing had been offered to residents here, and concluded that no evidence could yet show what testing here would find; both were true in March. The Health page, The Numbers, the FAQ and What To Do separately said no biomonitoring programme existed; that remains true of the NHS and the council. Leigh Day has since arranged testing, which was not provided by the NHS or the council, and results for 49 residents were given out on 23 September 2026.
  • The HSE consultation on EEA-NH4 has closed. It closed on 1 May 2026; we have not yet recorded its outcome.
  • Sandringham Avenue Allotments. The Evidence page said Sandringham Avenue Allotments had closed pending further results. Wyre Council’s letter of 12 August 2026 reported that the Environment Agency has concluded that this site, like Occupation Road, meets the criteria to be determined as contaminated land under Part 2A.
  • A community meeting has been announced. What To Do said no community meetings had been announced; Leigh Day has said it will hold one in autumn 2026.
  • The timeline has been extended. Its summary of events since March still said no closure date had been made public, and stopped at 4 September; it now includes the 14 September closure confirmation and the 23 September blood results, and its overview graphic is labelled as covering events to March 2026.
  • Our one-page community handout is withdrawn while it is rewritten. Dated March 2026, it predated the blood results, the kidney-cancer assessment and the closure announcement.
  • The open questions tracker is updated. It now gives the Health and Safety Executive’s delay as at 25 September 2026, checked against the request’s public page.

New

  • Start here. A plain-English introduction for anyone who has just seen the news, linked from the menu and the homepage. It adds no new claims: each figure links to the page that sources it.

Site changes

  • A new look when this site is shared. Links to the site now show a Hillhouse Watch card instead of the map: the mark is an eye whose pupil is the outline of the Hillhouse site, simplified. The site also has a browser-tab icon, and its description now reads: “An independent, sourced record of the Hillhouse industrial site, Thornton-Cleveleys, and PFAS (‘forever chemical’) contamination in the area.” The Facebook group’s cover uses the same design. Later the same day the mark was revised to read more clearly as an eye: a solid iris and a round pupil, with the site outline kept smaller inside it.
  • Tables on phones. Tables on several pages were forced wider than a phone screen; they now fit and scroll sideways where needed, and long links in source lists wrap.

17 September 2026

Six corrections, most to the 3 September post on the toxic gas question asked for passing trains, and two to the March investigation update, prepared on 17 September and published on 25 September 2026, after a second reading of the two authorities’ covering letters. All are our errors of attribution, framing or reading, not new information, and none changes what the documents record about either authority’s conduct.

Corrections

  • A log entry was attributed to the fire crews; it cannot be attributed to anyone. The entry at 18:04:43, reporting 200 cubic metres of process gas containing perfluoroisobutylene, reads “by phone from” a caller whose identity Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service withheld as personal data, an exemption covering its own employees and AGC’s staff alike. The post now says what the record says: the source is withheld.
  • We gave the wrong number of appliances and the wrong end of attendance. We said six pumps attended; the Service’s report records ten pumping appliances (the Environment Agency’s “6 pump fire” reflects the six that had arrived by 18:07, the time its own record gives as notified). We also gave 09:50 the next morning as the end of attendance, which is when the last appliance arrived; the stop message was recorded at 11:11. The post now gives both figures and says what each measures.
  • We described a toxic gas assessment as “requested and carried out”. The log shows a question asked by British Transport Police, an answer given on the basis of wind direction and smoke, and that answer relayed back, in five minutes and twenty-six seconds. The post and its headline now say that.
  • We said we had asked British Transport Police which railway line was meant. We had not. That request is drafted and has not been filed; the post now says so. This is the same error as the one corrected across the site on 11 September, on a page that sweep did not reach.
  • Two more claims that we had asked a question we had not. Our March investigation update was checked and cleared in the 11 September sweep, but that check only covered outbound correspondence from 1 June 2026, and the post is from March. Re-running it across the whole of 2026 finds no record that two requests, to the agencies asking which leads the investigation, and to the Environment Agency about how the two permits interact, were ever sent. Both now say we are preparing them. A third sentence on the same page, about a concern report to the Health and Safety Executive, was checked on 25 September and removed. The post’s closing summary no longer says requests were submitted.
  • We gave the wrong notification time for the Environment Agency. We said it was notified “within about twenty minutes” of the release being reported. The Agency’s own record gives its time notified as 18:07, a minute after the Service’s log records the call to the Agency; at 18:16:58 the log records the Agency’s incident number and that the information was being passed to an environment officer.

11 September 2026

A full accuracy sweep of every page found three of our own errors, corrected first, and brought the rest of the site up to date with evidence we already held.

Corrections

  • We said we had put questions to bodies we had not yet contacted. Sixteen posts carried wording such as “we are asking this openly, and putting it directly to WSP and the Environment Agency”, or to Lancashire County Council and the Health Cell. Our internal tracker and outbound correspondence confirmed the requests had not been sent. The wording now says we are preparing to put these questions formally to the bodies named. Nothing we published about any organisation’s conduct depended on this, and no such claim has changed. But it mattered: a body that has never been approached can rightly say so. We had written the rule for ourselves before we broke it: this site should not imply an organisation is ducking a question we have not actually asked.
  • A soil benchmark we quoted does not exist. Several pages compared PFOA soil readings against “the Dutch screening value of 3.8 µg/kg”, a figure that appears in no RIVM publication; it appears to have been introduced in error rather than mis-transcribed from a real document. We caught this on 2 August and removed it from The Numbers, but we did not check the rest of the site, and it remained on five other pages, including in one post’s list of sources, where a figure that does not exist was presented as a citation. Every instance is now replaced with the screening values WSP applies in its own Phase 2 report for the Environment Agency: 1.4 µg/kg for allotment soil, 7.6 µg/kg for residential gardens growing vegetables. Where we previously said all 25 samples at one property exceeded the benchmark, we now state the position against both real values, and note that the lowest of the 25 sits just below the residential figure.
  • Our timeline described itself inaccurately. It stated that three items previously listed as forthcoming (the Phase 3 reports, the HSE consultation outcome, and the Leigh Day town hall) “have now passed and are recorded above where they occurred”. They were not recorded; the page still described all three in the future tense. It now says plainly that its dated entries run to March 2026, that those three items passed their dates without our establishing what happened, and adds a short summary of developments since March.
  • A correction from 3 August was never recorded here. In early August we corrected a false claim that the Lancashire County Council Health Cell kidney-cancer report was unpublished and reached only through legal correspondence; it is published in full by Wyre Council. We changed three posts at the time but did not record it on this page, which our own standards require. We are recording it now rather than back-dating it.
  • The Numbers wrongly spliced two studies’ figures for PFOA in surface water. It gave a range of “12,100 to 20,624 ng/L”, combining the single value from one study with the maximum from another; that range appears in neither. It now reads “up to 20,624 ng/L”, with the two studies given separately.
  • One post misdated the Health Cell report. It gave 16 June 2026, which is when the report was forwarded to Leigh Day, rather than 12 May 2026, its own review date. Every other post had this right.
  • Our timeline wrongly said the October 2024 fire “had not been reported at the time”. This error was introduced earlier the same day, in the timeline correction above. The regulators were told: the Environment Agency was notified that evening, and AGC filed its statutory notification the following day. What had not happened was any public report; the page now says so and gives the notification dates.
  • Our Open Questions page said, of AGC’s statement that no enforcement action followed, “We have no reason to doubt it”. That was written before the Environment Agency’s record was disclosed. The record shows a breach of a permit condition, categorised C3, with a warning issued and a required action due 25 March 2025. Whether a warning amounts to “enforcement action” depends on what the term covers: the Agency’s own form describes enforcement action as something that can include a formal caution, prosecution, the service of a notice, or suspension or revocation of a permit. We now set out the record and both readings rather than offering a view.
  • One post carried two notes-to-self that should never have been published, asking for a source for the 71-properties figure and for the planning-moratorium correspondence. Both are now sourced; on the second, we had the document all along, in our own archive and on our own timeline. We also corrected how we described the moratorium: saying the government “refused” the request overstated it, since the reply pointed the council to planning powers it already holds rather than blocking it from acting.
  • Two previously unverified quotations were confirmed. We had flagged them internally because we held only the documents attached to a disclosure, not the covering letter carrying the authority’s actual answer, including, in one case, the answer to the question the whole request was built around. For six weeks our own records suggested we could not support two things we had published, and the proof was sitting on a public page we had linked to all along. Both letters have since been located and are now archived.

Updates

  • Events pages were out of date. The homepage and What To Do were still advertising a 21 May information event and March drop-in sessions as upcoming; both now say plainly that no further sessions have been announced.
  • The closure announcement is now noted. Several pages described AGC as the current operator with no mention of the closure of production announced on 13 July 2026; they now note the announcement, that no closure date had (at the time) been made public, and Wyre Council’s statement that the investigation is unaffected.
  • Sandringham Avenue Allotments. Wyre Council’s letter of 12 August 2026 states that the Environment Agency has concluded that this site, like Occupation Road, meets the criteria to be determined as contaminated land under Part 2A; the guidance-change table gained a row for the letter, which also records elevated PFAS in every egg sample taken from the four poultry keepers tested.
  • Kidney cancer figures are published. The Health page said in four places that no study had examined local cancer rates in relation to the site, and that age-adjusted small-area data had not been published. That is no longer true for kidney cancer: the Health Cell assessment published figures for the neighbourhood immediately south-east of the site, 14 cases against 6 expected, a standardised incidence ratio of 218. We have narrowed those statements rather than deleted them; they still hold for every other cancer and for the non-cancer conditions associated with PFAS.

3 September 2026

The Numbers’ groundwater section has been expanded: sampling is happening, but the results are not published.

Corrections

  • Our own internal research notes wrongly said groundwater had never been assessed. They went further than the site itself, saying groundwater “has never been assessed”; that was wrong, and we have said so in our corrections log.

Updates

  • Groundwater sampling is under way. The Numbers said there was no published data on PFAS in groundwater beneath or adjacent to the estate; that remains accurate, but it was incomplete, since a reader could take it to mean nobody is testing at all. AGC Chemicals Europe states on its own website that it has commissioned a third party to carry out a voluntary, intrusive investigation within the boundaries of land it owns, to sample and test soil, groundwater and surface water; Stage 1 is complete, Stage 2 began in June 2026, and both stages are agreed with Wyre Council and the Environment Agency. What is missing is not the testing, but the results, which are not published, and the identity of the third party, which is not named. Source: AGC Chemicals Europe, Site Investigation page, accessed 3 September 2026.

14 August 2026

A link check found three dead citations, all now fixed, and the contact form has been rebuilt.

Corrections

  • A citation pointed to a Guardian page that never existed. The Sources and Evidence page cited a Guardian article at /environment/2026/feb/03/pfas-action-plan; that page does not exist and, as far as we can establish, never did. We do not know how a citation to a non-existent page came to be on the site, and we are not going to guess; it should not have been there. The link and its heading have been removed; no claim on the site rested on it, and the UK PFAS plan it referred to is still cited from its GOV.UK source.
  • A citation was wrongly dated and linked. The Numbers had attributed a pre-publication figure of over 400,000 ng/L to a Guardian article dated 17 February 2023; the quote and the reporting are real, but the date and the address were both wrong. It is the article of 24 February 2023, now linked directly. The figure itself was already marked on the page as pre-peer-review, and the published figure of about 40,000 ng/L is still the one cited. Both this and the previous item were corrected on 7 August 2026, and are published here today.

Site changes

  • A retired government link was repointed. The Food Standards Agency citation pointed to cot.food.gov.uk, now retired; it now goes to the preserved copy in the UK Government Web Archive, alongside the Committee on Toxicity’s current GOV.UK page, with a note that the source is an archived one. This was also corrected on 7 August 2026.
  • The contact form has been rebuilt. It now shows a live character count, saves a draft in your own browser, reports any failure on the page, and records message length so we can tell if anything arrives short; there is no length limit. If you sent a long message before 12 August 2026 and had no reply, please send it again: at least one detailed account reached us cut off part way through a sentence, and we could not recover the rest of it. We are sorry; the form should not have been capable of that.

2 August 2026

A full verification sweep against primary sources found errors we should have caught before publishing, the most significant being the location of the site’s peak PFOA reading.

Corrections

  • The peak PFOA reading was wrongly placed at discharge point W1, the main permitted outfall. Dalmijn et al. (2025) record W1 as the lowest of every point sampled, at 30 and 33 ng/L total PFAS. The high readings, from 891 to 20,624 ng/L, were at three points north of the plant: a discharge beside a lagoon, a land drain, and a leaking section of discharge pipe. The paper identifies the lagoon as an effluent pit used by ICI, which operated the site until 1999, and notes it could not be accessed during sampling. The error appeared in five places across three pages and is corrected in all of them. We had also wrongly attributed the 1,744 ng/L EEA-NH4 figure to discharge point W2; the paper reports it for Hillylaid Pool water and gives no separate figure for the discharge point.
  • We had not reported what the paper says about cause. It attributes the high PFOA to use at the plant between 1955 and 2012 and to a reservoir remaining within the site, with re-emission as the mechanism, rather than to current discharge. That is now stated wherever the figures appear. AGC’s own reporting to the US EPA shows it was emitting PFOA as operator until 2012; the published record does not split the total between the two operators.
  • Six PubMed citations pointed to the wrong paper. Every one of the six links on the “What is PFAS” page supporting the C8 Science Panel’s findings pointed to an unrelated paper; all six have been replaced. Kidney cancer was also credited to the wrong study, and “pre-eclampsia” corrected to “pregnancy-induced hypertension”, the Panel’s own term.
  • Several figures were wrong. Total organofluorine “around 400,000 ng/L” is corrected to total PFAS of about 40,000 ng/L (the cited paper did not measure organofluorine; the higher figure came from a pre-publication quote). The EFSA limit was given as 4.4 µg/kg; it is 4.4 ng per kg of bodyweight per week. A dioxins figure was given in micrograms where the source states nanograms. A thermal oxidiser “offline 43 days” conflated 56 days of outages with 43 invalid monitoring days. Several dates were wrong, including the publication date of the Dalmijn paper, a company name change, the date of Phase 2 soil fieldwork, and the date of a chemical spill.
  • Several attributions were wrong. Professor Crispin Halsall of Lancaster University, an independent academic with no connection to the company, had been described as an “AGC spokesperson”. A company statement to journalists had been presented as data submitted to a regulator. Classifications attributed to ECHA were the Environment Agency’s assessment and a supplier’s self-classification. Two clauses of a Guardian article had been stitched into a single quotation. All corrected.
  • Three claims have been withdrawn. That a soil report’s PDF carried the same name in two independent metadata fields; it appears in one field, echoed by the software into a second (the rest of that post stands). That March 2026 was the first time the contamination reached the Parliamentary record; it was raised in June 2025. Language in our coverage of a 2000 industry meeting asserting the company “chose” to continue, and an anonymous nickname aimed at an individual; we report what the minutes record and what happened afterwards, and do not assert intent.

A full internal record of every change, with the verbatim source text relied on, is kept alongside the site.

23 July 2026

A precision correction to loose shorthand about the fire’s duration, with no change to any factual claim.

Corrections

  • “A three-month fire” was imprecise. The fire article (agc-fire-three-month-shutdown.md) used this shorthand in two places, in its body and in its closing questions list, and the same correction has been applied to the Questions tracker page; the fire itself was short-lived, and what lasted three months was the shutdown of production it caused. The wording is corrected to “a fire that shut the plant for three months” throughout. The article’s title, summary and every other reference already stated this correctly.

9 March 2026

A new post on BBC coverage and the planned Leigh Day town hall.

New

  • New post: “BBC News Lancashire Covering Hillhouse Story, and a Leigh Day Public Meeting Planned for May” (bbc-coverage-leigh-day-town-hall.md). BBC News Lancashire confirmed filming in Thornton-Cleveleys on 10 March 2026 (journalist Yunus Mulla); a Leigh Day public town hall was announced for late May 2026 at Thornton-Cleveleys FC, with contact details for Leigh Day. Specific dates were to be updated when confirmed.

8 March 2026

Three new posts, on the 1km zone, residential testing and the UK’s PFAS plan, and the biomonitoring post updated with confirmed sources.

New

  • New post: “The 1km Zone: Three Definitions, No Map, No Measurement Point”. Documented three formulations of the advisory zone across official council documents (later found to be four; see 25 September), with no published map and no measurement methodology; FOI question 5 was redirected to the Environment Agency. Included a “What We Are Not Claiming” section. All three formulation citations were marked at the time as pending document-level confirmation.
  • New post: “Residential Soil Testing: 71 Properties, 7 Designated High Risk”. Documented the residential testing programme: 71 properties tested, PFOA found in the majority, 7 designated high risk, no residential Part 2A determination at the time. Also covered the planning moratorium: the government declined Wyre’s request, and the council already holds planning powers under the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. An inference about a named official’s knowledge was removed from the post.
  • New post: “The UK’s First PFAS Plan: Published, Challenged, and Being Watched”. Covered the Defra PFAS Plan (3 February 2026) and Emma Hardy MP’s parliamentary challenge on the Environment Act 2021’s “polluter pays” compliance, marked unverified at the time pending a Hansard reference; also noted Leigh Day was tracking statutory compliance.

Updates

  • The biomonitoring post was updated with confirmed sources. (biomonitoring-refused-three-day-gap.md) Previously marked unverified, it now cites the Council Leader’s public call for blood tests (ENDS Report, 3 March 2026) and Wyre Council’s formal refusal (FOI response, 6 March 2026, on WhatDoTheyKnow.com): “not appropriate”, results “uninterpretable”, would cause “additional distress”. The analysis was reframed to remove editorial language while preserving the documented three-day sequence, and the unverified tag was kept only for items still unconfirmed at the time (the UKHSA guidance consultation, and coordination between the Leader and the FOI response).
  • Existing pages updated to match. The Health page (FOI refusal, WhatDoTheyKnow link), FAQ (blood-testing Q&A, an added international comparator note, the 71/7 stat, a planning-moratorium note, disclaimer date), Take Action (1km zone box, the Defra Plan and Emma Hardy item) and The Numbers (a new Phase 3 section: 71 properties, PFOA in the majority, 7 high-risk, no residential Part 2A).

Site changes

  • The About page’s “last updated” date changed from February to March 2026.

6 March 2026

Two changes published the same day: a navigation and theme overhaul, and the Environment Agency’s first Part 2A conclusion, for Occupation Road Allotments. Sandringham Avenue closed as a precaution the same day; its own Part 2A conclusion followed later, in the 12 August letter (see 11 September).

Updates

  • Occupation Road Allotments met the Part 2A criteria. The Environment Agency concluded the site meets the statutory criteria for Contaminated Land under Part 2A, based on PFOA found in both soil and produce; if formal determination is made, Wyre Council will “identify those responsible and secure remediation”. Added to Take Action, FAQ, Evidence, Untold Story and the homepage. Source: Wyre Council, 5 March 2026; all previous placeholder “verify” tags on allotment closures were replaced with this source.
  • Sandringham Avenue Allotments closed as a precaution, pending scientific interpretation of soil results.
  • Root uptake added to the produce advice. The Part 2A classification also rested on PFOA found within vegetables, not only surface soil; PFAS is absorbed as plants grow, so washing and peeling removes surface soil but cannot remove PFAS already taken up. The FSA’s continued “wash and peel” advice, given this finding, has not been publicly explained. Added to Take Action and FAQ.
  • The FSA updated its advice (5 March 2026): residents within 1km should consider raised beds with fresh soil when growing produce.
  • Permit compliance failures added (The Numbers, Untold Story): September 2025 data recorded dioxins at 3.7 times the permit limit, particulates at 47 times the limit, and the thermal oxidiser reported offline for 43 days (a figure later corrected on 2 August, which had conflated 56 days of outages with 43 invalid monitoring days). The permit has no PFAS monitoring requirement on any of its 15+ air emission points.
  • A shared discharge point was added (Evidence, The Numbers): the 20,624 ng/L PFOA reading was described as a combined AGC/Victrex PLC discharge point, with the figure reflecting combined output from both operations and said to be unable to be attributed to a single operator without further investigation. This premise was wrong, and was corrected on 2 August; the reading was not at that point.
  • A historical discharge discrepancy was noted: two figures for total PFOA discharge appear in the public record, 178,000 kg (Guardian/Watershed FOI, September 2024) and about 145,000 kg (an Environment Agency estimate in Dalmijn et al., 2025). The discrepancy has not been explained.
  • Egg testing results added: Wyre Council-commissioned testing found 83 µg/kg in one duck egg (from ENDS Report and BBC, not independently verified at the time); Leigh Day-commissioned testing at four properties within 1km found all four exceeded the EFSA safe limit of 4.4 µg/kg (17 February 2026).
  • Wyre Council’s leader publicly called for PFAS blood testing and a “proper inquiry” into local health (ENDS Report, 3 March 2026).
  • Drop-in sessions added: 12 and 17 March 2026, Thornton-Cleveleys FC, Gamble Road, 4 to 7pm.
  • Allotment closures reported (5 March 2026): at least two Thornton allotments were reported closed following soil results (Blackpool Gazette, 5 March 2026, pending Wyre Council confirmation at the time).
  • A “how the guidance has changed” table was added, tracing official advice from “wash and peel” (July 2024) to allotment closures (March 2026), with sources.
  • A 1km boundary caveat was added: no publicly available scientific justification for the 1km radius had been identified; airborne contamination had been detected at 20km; residents beyond 1km should not assume they are unaffected.
  • Phase 3 residential soil data (February 2026) added to The Numbers (WSP code SP510): the first confirmed residential results; all 25 samples exceeded the “Dutch benchmark” then in use (withdrawn on 11 September; see that entry); the peak reading of 119 µg/kg at 0.6m depth was still rising when sampling stopped, a pattern consistent with groundwater migration.
  • The homepage gained a new stat for the Part 2A classification, and its context box was updated.

Site changes

  • Navigation reduced from 13 top-level items to 6: Home, The Facts (dropdown: What is PFAS, The Numbers, Regulatory Context, Evidence, Sources), Health, Take Action (dropdown: Information & Resources, Resources, FAQ), About, Contact. The changelog moved to the footer only. Dropdowns work on desktop by hover and on mobile by tap, and the active state propagates to a dropdown’s parent button when one of its child pages is active.
  • Duplicate title headings removed. The template already outputs a styled heading from the page title; a redundant repeat was removed from Evidence, FAQ, Health, Resources, Sources, Information & Resources, The Numbers, Regulatory Context and What is PFAS.
  • Light theme became the default, with dark theme still available by a toggle and the preference saved in-browser. All colours were checked against the WCAG AA standard (4.5:1 minimum contrast); dark theme was preserved as CSS overrides only, with no content change.

25 February 2026

Accessibility fixes for the dark theme, a tone rework of the cancer statistics, and more external sources added.

Corrections

  • The Health page’s cancer figure was given a qualification it lacked. It now states that age or other factors cannot be assessed without the standardised incidence rates.

  • A headline cancer-statistics finding was reframed as a reported claim. The Evidence page’s BBC cancer-statistics entry had presented “above national average” as a headline finding; it is corrected to “reported as being above the national average”, with an expanded caveat noting Thornton-Cleveleys’ older-than-average demographic (unadjusted rates in such areas naturally run higher) and that the underlying standardised rates were not published in the BBC article.

Site changes

  • Dark-theme contrast fixed. Eight inline-styled boxes on Evidence, Health and The Numbers used light backgrounds that produced white text on pale backgrounds, unreadable on the dark theme; all converted to dark-theme-compatible equivalents (grey, amber and blue note boxes). The map caption colour on The Numbers was also changed, from #666 to #8b9499, for contrast.
  • Cancer statistics presentation reworked for tone on the Health page. The 35-43% figure moved from an alarming red-bordered box to a plain paragraph.
  • More external sources added to Resources: three CHEM Trust articles specific to Hillhouse (5 February 2026; a 2025 vegetables warning; a 2025 PFAS hotspots feature); a Guardian article and the UK Government’s PFAS Action Plan, both February 2026; the UK Environmental Audit Committee’s PFAS inquiry (2025), including Dr Megson’s written evidence (PFAS0073); the Italian Miteni criminal case (2025), the first successful criminal prosecution for PFAS pollution in Europe, 11 executives sentenced, 350,000 people affected; and France’s ban on PFAS in clothing and cosmetics (February 2026), the first such national ban. The existing CHEM Trust organisations entry was also updated to reference this Hillhouse-specific coverage and the EAC inquiry submission.

18 February 2026

The site’s foundational rewrite: a factual, sourced, estate-centric tone, with a first pass of corrections and the first readability and tone changes.

Corrections

  • Several unsupported claims were removed: that the hazard was “known 1960s (internal company research)”, which implied corporate knowledge without a citation (What is PFAS); a 68,900,000 ng/L 3M Zwijndrecht figure from the comparison table, an extraordinary claim without a verifiable source (The Numbers); an inflammatory quote, “giant chunk of toxic material”, attributed to Megson (Untold Story); and European site financial-impact figures (€571M, €70M+) that lacked verifiable sources.
  • A Guardian article date was corrected, from 28 to 24 February 2023 (Resources), to match the actual URL.
  • The cancer-prevalence statistics (35-43% above average) were given an explicit caveat: the data is third-hand (NHS to Ribble Rivers Trust to BBC), age standardisation is unknown, no causal link is established, and ward-level data is an information gap.
  • A separate cancer-statistics claim was flagged as unsupported. The Health page’s 4.42-4.58% figures were given an explicit caveat that they “do not appear in the BBC article and the original dataset has not been independently verified”; the caveat was also moved to appear before the figures.
  • “Has not been publicly explained” was reworded to “has not been determined”, removing any implication of concealment.
  • The EU drinking-water comparison was corrected. Figures compared to the EU standard are discharge-water measurements, not drinking water at the tap; the comparison is used because it is the most widely understood benchmark, and discharge enters watercourses where it is diluted before any abstraction for drinking water. A footnote was added to the comparison table giving the figure as discharge water, around 206 times the EU drinking water standard, and notes were added to The Numbers, Evidence and FAQ making the discharge/drinking-water distinction explicit throughout, since the comparison could otherwise mislead.
  • Lead was said to have been phased out in 1999; it was phased out in 2000. The date is corrected on What is PFAS, with specific legislation links added.
  • EEA-NH4 testing was described as involving “soils”; the source reports water samples. The Megson 2024 paper is about water samples, not soil; the Untold Story page is corrected, with source attribution notes added.
  • “Thousands of chemicals” was replaced with a cited figure. What is PFAS now cites the OECD’s count of over 4,700, with a link, and notes that estimates vary.
  • A note on the regulatory-timeline comparison table. The table on What is PFAS, distinct from the contamination-pathway table elsewhere on the site, was qualified: it shows a regulatory timeline and is not intended to imply toxicological equivalence between the substances compared.
  • The 178-tonne breakdown sub-figures (49,100 / 54,300 / 6,200 / 5,100 / 63,300 kg) were qualified as coming from EA permit documentation, with the specific permit version or FOI document still to be confirmed.
  • A DuPont Parkersburg figure of about 13,000 ng/L was flagged with its source still to be confirmed, and a Chemical & Engineering News citation was made more specific, with its article title and author still to be confirmed.
  • A zone-size claim was qualified: the specific regulatory documents for each country’s zone sizes were still to be compiled. A separate claim about a Zwijndrecht zone change was qualified with its own source still to be confirmed.
  • An area-calculation claim was qualified as derived from mapped boundaries, with its methodology available on request.
  • A computer-modelling claim was qualified as based on a review of publicly available documents as of February 2026; if such modelling exists in non-public documents, we said we were not aware of it.
  • A claim that no cancer studies existed was qualified as based on a review of the ECHA database and the Environment Agency’s risk evaluation.

Site changes

  • An editorial URL alias, /what-they-dont-tell-you/, was removed from the Untold Story page; /the-untold-story/ was kept for link stability.
  • Cancer-statistics caveats were reordered to appear before the figures, on the Health and Evidence pages, so limitations are seen first.
  • A number of tags were already in place and were intentionally retained at the time, to show transparency about what was not yet known: AGC’s stated position on PFOS use and on PFOA manufacture, the specific EA document for the EEA-NH4 testing exclusion, and Guardian article specifics for the Megson method development. This is a historical note about that day; it is not a statement about what the live pages carry today.
  • Other citations were added or made more specific: the 178-tonne figure gained a direct link to the Guardian’s article of 24 September 2024; the $671M DuPont settlement figure (Resources) gained a New York Times source link; EU Directive 2020/2184 gained a direct EUR-Lex link; and the 2009 PFOS restriction claim (Untold Story) gained a source link for the Stockholm Convention.
  • Definitions were added throughout for units: ng/L explained as nanograms per litre, with the EU comparison; µg/kg explained as micrograms per kilogram; a unit guide box added to The Numbers. Technical terms were defined on first use: EEA-NH4 (“a fluorochemical used as a replacement for PFOA in manufacturing”), biomonitoring (“blood and urine testing to check for chemicals in the body”), reprotoxic (“suspected of harming fertility or unborn children”), non-targeted analysis (“a screening technique that looks for any chemicals present”), organofluorine (“a broader category of fluorine-containing compounds, including PFAS”), atmospheric deposition (“chemicals that settled from the air over decades”), precursor compounds (“chemicals that can change into PFOS in the environment”), ulcerative colitis (“a bowel disease”), pre-eclampsia (“a serious pregnancy condition involving high blood pressure”), environmental permits (“legal documents that set the rules for what a company can discharge”), and peer-reviewed (“studies independently checked by other scientists before publication”).
  • The Health page was restructured with a plain-English summary box; long sentences were split throughout; passive constructions were reduced (for example “has been detected” to “testing found”, where appropriate); a context box was added to the European comparison table noting that different sites have different contamination pathways, so direct comparison may not be appropriate; and attribution language was clarified (“unattributed” to “source not identified”; consistent use of “open question”).
  • The site was reframed as centred on the Hillhouse estate rather than on AGC specifically: contamination attributed to a specific operator via its own disclosures was distinguished from contamination detected but unattributed, and from gaps where no investigation has occurred. Historical context was added acknowledging the site’s multiple operators, including ICI (1950s to 1999) and AGC (1999 to date), and shared estate infrastructure; an attribution-methodology section was added to the Sources page; “AGC site” was changed to “Hillhouse industrial estate” where appropriate. PFOS in eggs was noted as an open question: AGC states it never used PFOS, and the source of the PFOS found remained unattributed.
  • The whole site was rewritten in a factual, research-based tone: editorial language, rhetorical framing and advocacy messaging removed; every claim sourced or marked for citation; the action page restructured as an information and resources page. This was the site’s original relaunch, the foundation the later corrections and updates were made against.

The original wording of this changelog, exactly as it stood before this reorganisation, is kept in full at the changelog archive.