Actor Michael Sheen has revealed he found toxic polychlorinated biphenyls in his own blood while investigating historic chemical dumping across Wales. The two-part BBC documentary series Buried with Michael Sheen, which premiered in August 2026, examines decades of industrial waste burial linked to Monsanto.
Michael Sheen discovered dangerous forever chemicals in his bloodstream after agreeing to be tested as a control during an investigative documentary into buried toxic waste in Wales and the North West. The Good Omens actor, who was born in Newport and grew up in Port Talbot, stated that the results came as a shock after he initially assumed nothing would appear in his sample.
He added that receiving the results made it clear that there is no safe level, we all have it in us.
The investigation tracks chemical dumping sites where manufacturers buried tens of thousands of tons of polychlorinated biphenyls during the 1970s. Once used as coolants, electrical insulators, and lubricants, these compounds were banned in Britain during the 1980s because they damage human DNA, link to cancer, and persist in soil, water, and human tissue for decades.
Douglas Gowan and the Brofiscin Quarry Investigation
The documentary roots its investigation in the decades-long whistleblowing efforts of Douglas Gowan, a former farming consultant for the National Farmers’ Union. Nearly a decade ago, Sheen stumbled across a Wikipedia sentence mentioning Brofiscin Quarry in South Wales while living in Los Angeles. That digital search led him to Gowan, who had spent more than 50 years attempting to warn authorities about industrial contamination.
In 1972, Gowan discovered that nine cows had died of poisoning at a farm adjacent to Brofiscin Quarry after chemical manufacturers dumped drums of toxins there. Gowan alleged that chemical giant Monsanto had dumped huge amounts of industrial chemicals all around Wales. He described polychlorinated biphenyls as some of the worst contaminants known to man.
Before his death in 2018, Gowan claimed that Monsanto knowingly buried highly toxic waste across Welsh communities. He faced intense opposition, including being attacked by masked men with steel bars outside his private members’ club while the government accused him of doctoring his results. Sheen filmed a two-day interview with Gowan after receiving an urgent message: Come and see me. Come quickly because I might not be around much longer.
Gowan died two months later, leaving his archives, test results, and diaries in the hands of the documentary team, which also included investigative journalists Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor.
Toxic Findings Across Wales and Cheshire Testing Sites
The BBC production commissioned testing at the 14 dumping grounds originally identified by Gowan. The results confirmed that 13 of the 14 sites carried higher than normal levels of polychlorinated biphenyls. Brofiscin Quarry, despite being capped in 2011 to prevent leakage, registered chemical levels 160 times higher than the national average.
An even more extreme concentration emerged at a farm in Alvanley, Cheshire, owned by Paul and Wendy Jackson, where soil tests revealed levels nearly 2,000 times higher than average. Mr Jackson himself was found to carry one of the highest individual PCB blood readings recorded during the investigation. Local residents recounted childhood memories of paddling in strange jelly left behind by waste trucks or developing unexplainable scabs, while villagers reported a high incidence of tumorous lumps and brain, breast, and lymph node cancers.
The Rev Paul Cawthorne, a Shropshire vicar, told the documentary that he joined the investigation following a deathbed confession from a parishioner who worked in chemical dumping. The worker described a truck driver getting crystals on his hand that caused an instantaneous rash, only for the site manager to tell him not to ask questions.
Corporate Legacy and the Path from Alabama to Newport
As production of the chemicals decreased in the United States after Monsanto recognized health risks—leading to a $300m (£225m) settlement in Anniston, Alabama, where residents suffered severe birth defects—the company shifted higher output to Newport, South Wales. Newport once produced a third of the world’s PCBs, initially dumping them directly into the River Severn and the Severn Estuary before burying the waste in Welsh quarries.
Eastman Chemical Company, which holds responsibility for Monsanto’s legacy production in the United Kingdom, did not respond to requests for comment from Sheen’s team or the BBC. Sheen noted that the affected communities shared a vulnerability: a desperate need for employment that left residents unable to speak out about environmental hazards without risking their livelihoods. The actor hopes the broadcast triggers widespread public outrage and demands for official testing at unmonitored legacy dumping grounds across the country.
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