{"id":163949,"date":"2025-12-02T07:30:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T07:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/163949\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T07:30:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T07:30:07","slug":"uk-and-europes-hidden-landfills-at-risk-of-leaking-toxic-waste-into-water-supplies-landfill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/163949\/","title":{"rendered":"UK and Europe\u2019s hidden landfills at risk of leaking toxic waste into water supplies | Landfill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thousands of landfills across the UK and Europe<\/a> sit in floodplains, posing a potential threat to drinking water and conservation areas if toxic waste is released into rivers, soils and ecosystems, it can be revealed.<\/p>\n

The findings are the result of the first continent-wide mapping of landfills, conducted by the Guardian, Watershed Investigations<\/a> and Investigate Europe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Patrick Byrne, of Liverpool John Moores University, said: \u201cWith increasing frequency and magnitudes of floods and erosion from climate change, there\u2019s a greater risk of these wastes washing into our environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis includes physical waste like plastics and building materials, but also toxic metals and chemicals such as Pfas [\u2018forever chemicals\u2019] and PCBs [polychlorinated biphenyls].\u201d<\/p>\n

Kate Spencer, professor of environmental geochemistry at Queen Mary University, said: \u201cWe\u2019ve identified wide-ranging wastes at an eroding coastal landfill [in Tilbury] including what looked like hospital blood bags, and we are talking about tens of thousands of sites that if they aren\u2019t lined and are at flood risk, then there\u2019s multiple ways for it to get into groundwater, surface water and the food chain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the EU there are estimated to be up to 500,000 landfills<\/a>. Roughly 90% of them, including 22,000 sites in the UK, predate pollution control regulations such as landfill linings to prevent leaching. Modern landfills which are well managed are likely to pose a low risk.<\/p>\n

More than 61,000 landfills have been identified across Europe, with 28% located in areas vulnerable to flooding. Modelling indicates the true number of flood\u2011risk sites could be as high as 140,000. This mapping effort<\/a>, based on requests for landfill data from 10 countries and supplemented with open-source information, highlights a deeper issue: EU institutions lack centralised landfill records, while data from individual member states remains fragmented, inconsistent and often inaccessible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have inadequate records, differences in ways of categorising these sites and that makes it really difficult to deal with,\u201d said Spencer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the worst possible scenario. Most landfills will be fine, but you only need a small number of sites which contain very toxic chemicals to be a problem. We just don\u2019t know which ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than half of the mapped landfills are in areas where groundwater fails to meet chemical quality standards, suggesting the landfills may in some cases have contributed to the contamination.<\/p>\n

The EU landfill directive<\/a>, adopted in 1999, banned unlined landfills and created strict waste acceptance criteria. But before this there were few or no pollution containment measures.<\/p>\n

Many older sites across the UK and Europe were built before modern protections. Photograph: Ashley Cooper\/Global Warming Images\/Alamy<\/p>\n

\u201cThere could be many other sources of pollution, such as farming and industry, but one of the main ways chemicals migrate away from landfills is through groundwater,\u201d said Byrne.<\/p>\n

Byrne found leachate leaking from the historic landfill at Newgate nature reserve in Wilmslow, Cheshire, into a small stream. His tests found toxic Pfas \u201cforever chemicals\u201d at 20 times the acceptable levels for drinking water. In Greece, tests found levels of Pfas many times above drinking water standards, as well as mercury and cadmium leaching into the Nedontas river from the former Maratholaka landfill site in the Taygetos mountains, which are visited by thousands of hikers every year. The local mayor of Kalamata says the site has ceased to operate since June 2023 and that \u201cthere is currently no evidence or data to substantiate any environmental impact from the operation of the site\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some of these waters could be sources of drinking water and analysis found almost 10,000 landfills in drinking water zones in France, the UK, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. More than 4,000 of these are historic landfills in England and Wales and are therefore unlikely to have pollution controls. It was not possible to confirm whether landfills in Europe predated regulations or not.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t and won\u2019t know how much risk to human health and our drinking water there is until you can identify where all the landfills are, what is in them, whether they\u2019re leaching and if treatment processes are filtering them out\u201d said Byrne.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the European Commission said that \u201cunder the drinking water directive the quality of the water has to be ensured \u2018at the tap\u2019 in the whole EU. The directive includes several parameters to be monitored and the corresponding limit values have to be complied with. In case of exceedances of these limit values, member states must ensure that the necessary remedial action is taken.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the UK, water companies undertake risk assessments and monitoring of their public water abstractions under regulatory guidelines.<\/p>\n

Landfills that are most visibly at risk of exposure are those along the coast. The analysis found 335 landfills in coastal erosion zones in England, Wales and France, and 258 landfills across Europe within 200 metres of the coast, which could be at risk of erosion or exposure from storm surges.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the tip of the iceberg,\u201d said Spencer, who is helping the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to rank the most high-risk landfills out of 1,200 identified priority sites in England and Wales. She tested two eroding landfills on the coast and found Lynemouth in the north-east released elevated concentrations of arsenic, and Lyme Regis in the south-west discharged high levels of lead, both of which could cause ecological harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now need to understand the potential risks of climate change and associated pollution release at all our historic landfill sites, not just the coastal ones,\u201d she said, adding that money will be needed to tackle these sites.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEssentially we are all living on a garbage dump,\u201d said Spencer, who explained that about 80% of the British population lives within 2km of known landfill sites, and disproportionately in the most deprived parts of the country.<\/p>\n

A report<\/a> from the UK\u2019s Health Security Agency last year concluded that living close to a well-managed municipal active or closed landfill site does not pose a significant risk to human health, although the picture for historic sites is less clear due to the lack of data.<\/p>\n

Wildlife may also be at risk, as more than 2,000 European landfills are in protected conservation areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know plastics are accumulating in wildlife, humans and environments and there\u2019s emerging evidence of negative health impacts,\u201d said Byrne.<\/p>\n

\u201cA key thing with chemical pollution is where the chemical leachate goes. We have important wetlands around these areas, so if the leachate goes there it could accumulate in wildlife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Illegal waste dumping is also a significant problem, which Europol has identified<\/a> as one of Europe\u2019s fastest-growing areas of organised crime. In February, Croatian authorities arrested 13 people<\/a> suspected of illegally dumping at least 35,000 tonnes of waste from Italy, Slovenia and Germany in Croatia, generating a profit of at least \u20ac4m for the criminals.<\/p>\n

In England, Environment Agency data<\/a> shows 137 open investigations into illegal dumps, involving more than 1m cubic metres of material.<\/p>\n

In the Campania region of southern Italy, illegal toxic waste dumping by the mafia has been blamed for the increased death and disease rates in the area.<\/p>\n

In England and Wales, at the current pace of use our remaining landfill capacity<\/a> could run out in about 2050. New sites often face environmental concerns and public opposition.<\/p>\n

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: \u201cOur job is to protect people and the environment, and we are working closely with the landfill industry, water companies and across government to better understand the impacts from Pfas chemicals in landfills.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnvironment Agency teams are undertaking a multi-year programme to improve evidence about the sources of Pfas pollution in England. Alongside this, we are also running further studies to investigate the potential contribution of Pfas in landfill leachate to a limited number of sewage works.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Defra spokesperson said: \u201cWe want to prevent waste from occurring in the first place, but where waste occurs, we need to manage it in the most appropriate way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are committed to reducing the amount of waste being sent to landfill, supported through our collection and packaging reforms. Alongside this, the forthcoming circular economy growth plan will outline measures to drive greater reuse and recycling, safeguarding the value of our resources and preventing the nation\u2019s waste going to landfill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: This dataset may contain duplicate records. Duplicates can arise from multiple data sources, repeated entries, or variations in data collection processes. While efforts have been made to identify and reduce duplication, some records may remain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of landfills across the UK and Europe sit in floodplains, posing a potential threat to drinking water…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-163949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}