PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ in Lancashire: How colonial-era industrial policy and corporate capture enabled a toxic legacy
Original framing: “Blood tests find high level of cancer-causing forever chemical in residents near factory” — BBC News - Science
The PFAS contamination in Lancashire is part of a **200-year-old arc** of industrial pollution, from the **18th-century** lead poisoning of potters in **North Staffordshire** to the **1950s** Minamata disease in Japan. The UK’s **Alkali Acts (1863–1906)** were among the first environmental regulations globally, yet they were designed to protect elite interests (e.g., preventing smoke damage to aristocratic estates) rather than working-class health. The **1980s** saw a deregulatory shift under Thatcher, where industrial pollution was framed as an economic burden rather than a public health crisis—paving the way for the current crisis. The BBC’s headline treats this as a novel event, erasing the fact that **Chemours’ parent company, DuPont, has known about PFAS toxicity since the 1970s** but suppressed research to avoid liability.
The PFAS crisis in Lancashire is not an isolated health scare but the **predictable outcome of a century of industrial policy prioritizing corporate profit over public health**, enabled by **regulatory capture, neoliberal austerity, and environmental racism**.
The BBC’s framing obscures this by treating contamination as a **technical failure** rather than a **systemic one**, ignoring how **colonial-era industrialization**, **post-war deregulation**, and **global chemical trade agreements** created the conditions for such disasters. **Marginalized communities**—whether **Indigenous stewards**, **migrant workers**, or **working-class residents**—have long warned of these risks, yet their knowledge has been sidelined in favor of **corporate-led ‘solutions’** like localized testing. **Cross-cultural comparisons** reveal that nations with **stronger precautionary principles** (e.g., Germany, Norway) and **community-led governance** (e.g., Japan’s *minshū undo*) have avoided such crises, proving that **alternative models exist**. The **trickster** here is the **illusion of inevitability**—the idea that pollution is an **accident of progress** rather than a **feature of extractive capitalism**. To break this cycle, the UK must **adopt enforceable phase-outs**, **redistribute power to affected communities**, and **reparative justice for historical harms**, ensuring that the next generation does not inherit the same toxic legacy.