{"id":37127,"date":"2024-06-24T05:09:24","date_gmt":"2024-06-24T05:09:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/how-michael-sheen-helped-to-uncover-a-dark-environmental-secret\/"},"modified":"2024-06-24T05:09:25","modified_gmt":"2024-06-24T05:09:25","slug":"how-michael-sheen-helped-to-uncover-a-dark-environmental-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/news\/how-michael-sheen-helped-to-uncover-a-dark-environmental-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"How Michael Sheen helped to uncover a dark environmental secret"},"content":{"rendered":"


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By\u00a0Rosie Mercer,\u00a0<\/span>BBC News<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"GettyGetty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The actor Michael Sheen described what he discovered as “extraordinary”<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Michael Sheen was relaxing at his Los Angeles home when something caught his eye on Wikipedia.<\/p>\n

It was a single line about a man named Douglas Gowan, who had discovered dangerously high levels of a toxic chemical escaping a landfill near farmland in south Wales.<\/p>\n

Disturbed and intrigued, the Hollywood star reached out to Douglas, who by this point was seriously ill and had a matter of months to live.<\/p>\n

Sheen arranged to meet Douglas to record his final testimony – sparking a journey into a dark environmental secret.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

‘A life changing moment’<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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The story begins in 1967 when Douglas, who was working as a consultant for the National Farming Union, was called to look at a badly deformed calf at a farm near Llantrisant, in Rhondda Cynon Taf.<\/p>\n

Douglas had heard odd reports from the area, but what he saw was to change the course of his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see this calf lying on the grass. Three legs, no tail. Piteous look on its face. No genitalia. It’s there in my arms. And it was a life changing moment,\u201d he later told Sheen.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to know who was responsible for this, what had caused it. And I wanted those people to be held accountable.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"MichaelMichael Sheen<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Douglas Gowan shared his story with Hollywood actor Michael Sheen<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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Douglas knew where to start.<\/p>\n

The farm was next to a landfill site, called Brofiscin Quarry<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He collected samples from the water escaping the landfill and sent them to a laboratory, where scientists found a famous fire-retardant type of chemical called poly-chlorinated biphenyls – more commonly known as PCBs.<\/p>\n

PCBs are now known to be highly toxic and production of the chemicals is banned in 151 countries, including the UK.<\/p>\n

But back in the 1960s, the chemicals were celebrated and used in products like paint and paper to stop them from catching fire.<\/p>\n

The chemicals were largely associated with one company – a US chemical giant called Monsanto – whose European factory was in Newport, south Wales. The company is no longer in existence.<\/p>\n

The company had produced thousands of tonnes of surplus PCBs which were being buried in dumpsites.<\/p>\n

Douglas began to fear that the chemical was getting into the food chain – via fields, cattle, meat and milk.<\/p>\n

He also feared that PCBs were so-called forever chemicals<\/a>, meaning they would never biodegrade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

More from across the BBC<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Douglas was sure he was on to something and worked for years to prove it.<\/p>\n

But at the time there was disagreement, as the government’s own tests from the site revealed lower levels of PCBs.<\/p>\n

Douglas, who died in 2018 at the age of 74, believed there was a conspiracy to silence him and spent a period of time in witness protection.<\/p>\n

Most of his key documents were never put into the public domain.<\/p>\n

After he died, his confidential documents ended up with an MP who agreed to share them with the hosts of a new podcast called Buried: The Last Witness<\/a> on BBC Radio 4.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest twist of the series is how Michael Sheen came to be involved.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Michael<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Michael Sheen with podcast producers Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
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“I’m just sitting in my house in LA, kind of going mad over the computer, thinking ‘I’ve stumbled across something’,” Sheen told Dan and Lucy.<\/p>\n

“Well, not thinking I’ve stumbled across something. Thinking, I’m finding out about something that surely people must know about, because this is extraordinary.”<\/p>\n

Sheen tracked Douglas down in 2017 just a year before he died.<\/p>\n

The actor then spent a weekend with Douglas, during which he recorded his full story.<\/p>\n

“He seemed very into wanting to tell his story, and also I think it became clear he felt like he might not have long to tell it. <\/p>\n

“I suppose, if anything, I was expecting a kind of anti-establishment, rebel, maverick, ‘stick it to the man’ kind of bloke, and that is not at all what I found,” said Sheen.<\/p>\n

Douglas, who returned to the south Wales farm to take multiple samples over the years, believed being exposed to PCBs had taken a toll on his health.<\/p>\n

“I’ve got all sorts of problems. Of which\u2026 I think virtually all can be attributed to my exposure to PCBs,” Douglas told Sheen in the recording.<\/p>\n

Douglas was angry, because he said PCBs had cost him and feared they would cost many others in the future.<\/p>\n

But he was angrier still that nobody did anything.<\/p>\n

The podcast’s producer Dan Ashby said: “Most true-crime series have a victim, who we all feel empathy for. <\/p>\n

“But in this one, we know the poison, we know the culprits, but the scary question is this: are we all the victims? I’ve never recorded an investigation that is at once so universal, and so deeply personal.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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All episodes of <\/b>Buried: The Last Witness<\/b><\/a> are available to listen to now on BBC Sounds. Episodes will also be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 each weekday from 24 June.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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