Michael Sheen has revealed he was shocked to find toxic “forever chemicals” in his own blood while filming a BBC documentary about buried chemical waste.
The Welsh actor, 57, was working on Buried, a BBC documentary airing on Monday, which visits parts of Wales and north-west England where dangerous chemicals were dumped in the 1970s. The chemicals, called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), were banned in the 1980s after being linked to DNA damage and cancer.
Unexpected test results
Sheen, who was born in Newport and raised in South Wales, agreed to have his own PCB levels tested as a control for the documentary. The results showed he also had PCBs in his blood.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Sheen said: “I wasn’t quite expecting how shocked I’d be by that. I thought, ‘Of course I’ll be tested because you won’t find anything’, and then when you get the results, you realise there is no safe level, we all have it in us.”
Call for official tests
Sheen is now calling for official tests at the many sites where chemical companies dumped “tens of thousands of tons” of PCBs in the 1970s. The documentary found that soils in the areas contained nearly 2,000 times the expected amounts of the chemicals.
Residents near former dumps had abnormally high PCB levels and had suffered rare cancers, Sheen learned during filming.
He told the publication: “People are dying of cancers, rare cancers, and there’s illness, and it’s incredibly worrying. I’m hoping that people will be so outraged and shocked by this story that there will be a demand for something to be done.”
Pattern of illness
Sheen added: “The places where the dumping took place share a pattern, a history of chronic illness that could potentially mask any problems and a desperate need for employment, so nobody feels they can speak out… Goodness knows how much of this is out there.”
