I live in ‘toxic’ village where drinking water is riddled with poisonous chemicals

IT is a small country village admired for its postcard views, but beneath the dark waters of the river that runs through its valley lies a deadly legacy from its mining past.

For years, local farmer Peter Unwin gulped down the spring water supplied by the river, cooked with it and bathed in it until in 2020 he was told he had bowel cancer. As The Sun visited, he told us: “Doctors think my health problems could well be linked.”

The concentration of mines around Peter’s farm in the Welsh village of Cwmystwyth, Ceredigion, has made the Ystwyth river that flows just a stone’s throw from his home one of the most polluted in the UK.

Stretching east to west across mid-Wales, more than 1,300 mines have been left abandoned after more than a century of excavation, leaving lead, gold, copper, and zinc residues to wash into surrounding rivers and water supplies.

A natural spring in the nearby Graig y Ddu mountain that towers above Peter’s farmhouse is one of those water supplies, and tests carried out on his drinking water confirmed it contained hugely unsafe levels of zinc.

Medics have for a long time linked the ingestion of metals, including zinc, with aggressive cancers, and those exposed to high levels of the metal can suffer from headaches and vomiting as well as more long-term issues like neurological problems and suppressed immune function.

Then, in August last year, Peter’s gall bladder burst. Again, he is convinced the medical emergency was caused by high levels of zinc in his drinking water.

Peter, 72, said: “Since we discovered the ultra-high levels of zinc in our water, we’ve put a new purifying system in, but I’ll only drink bottled water now, I’m not risking it.

“The doctors told me they think my health problems could well be linked to the zinc, but how the hell do you prove it?

“There’s metal contamination everywhere here. Everywhere you look, there’s an old mine, and the river is said to be highly contaminated. Probably the worst in the country.

The true extent of metal contamination in Wales was laid bare in a Welsh Affairs committee hearing on mine pollution.

It was estimated that more than 200,000 people lived on or close to a floodplain that had been contaminated by historical mining – around 7% of Wales – and that nearly 1,000 miles of Welsh riverways were heavily contaminated by it.

The hearing was told of a 2023 study, which found dangerous lead levels in eggs from chickens raised on contaminated soil downstream from abandoned mines in West Wales.

Exposure to high levels of lead metal can lead to a reduced IQ in children, as well as behavioural problems, nerve damage, and brain and kidney damage, according to the UK Health Security Agency.

‘Lead poisoning’ in cattle

James Raw, who farms on the opposite side of the River Ystwyth from Peter Unwin, has a family association with the mining industry that is now plaguing residents.

His great, great, great-grandfather moved to the area from his native Yorkshire in 1825 to take up a role as captain of the mines, having first learnt how to mine as a nine-year-old boy working 12-hour shifts below ground.

Nowadays the water is a heck of a lot clearer than it used to be, but I still wouldn’t want to drink it

Owain Pugh, farmer

James, 49, said: “He was in his late-20s when he moved here. He was mining around here for copper and lead.

“There’s no doubt that all that mining has caused an imbalance now, and certainly the vets locally tell me they are seeing the effects on animals that they work with.

“They say they’re seeing lead poisoning, in particular, and especially in cattle they treat.

“But I’ve been fishing the Ystwyth and other rivers here for years, and the fish I catch seem very healthy.”

Fellow farmer Owain Pugh, 64, has spent his whole life in the nearby Elan Valley and says he often sees a “red tinge” on the bottom of the River Ystwyth and believes the colourisation is due to metal particles washing down from mines in the area.

He added: “Nowadays the water is a heck of a lot clearer than it used to be, but I still wouldn’t want to drink it.”

‘Public health scandal’

Almost everyone living in the area has bought a water filtering machine, but the metal contamination threat to public health is only now being discussed in Westminster.

In July last year, former Tory minister Stephen Crabb used his role as Chair of the Welsh Affairs committee to voice his concerns about metal contamination throughout mid-Wales.

In a stinging letter to the Welsh Government’s Huw Irranca-Davies, Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs, Mr Crabb wrote: “The extent of metal mine pollution in Wales has been known for many years.

“Yet little concrete action has been taken, and the system as a whole has failed to deliver progress.”

Unless urgent action is taken, the issue of metal mine pollution in Wales has the potential to become an environmental and public health scandal

Stephen Crabb, former Tory minister

He continued: “Unless urgent action is taken, the issue of metal mine pollution in Wales has the potential to become an environmental and public health scandal.”

In the letter, he urged the Welsh Government to clean up the disused metal mines and force local authorities to maintain a database of affected land.

But local potter Duncan Browning, 73, who moved to the area from London more than 20 years ago, says he is happy to drink his private water supply from a stream running next to his home.

He told The Sun: “We filter it and test its purity regularly, and it is always well inside the safety limits on metals set out by the EU scientists.

“Our water is collected from a section of the stream that sits above the mines on our mountain, so it is safe, although it is next to a peat bog, so it can have a brown tinge and a distinctive peaty taste.

“There’s no mains water around here, so we all have to use whatever source we can find.

“We live right next to an old, now disused lead mine, but our drinking water doesn’t run anywhere near it. What we drink is completely safe. Certainly, I haven’t experienced any health problems, I’m glad to say.”

A Financial Times investigation, cited by Professor Mark Macklin, a River Systems and Global Change expert at the University of Lincoln, revealed that around 500 tons of metals leak from 129 mines across Wales yearly.

But the professor emphasised that with 1,300 metal mines sitting in Wales, the pollution is likely to be even higher.

He added: “Floods have become certainly more frequent and larger, with riverbank erosion, and you have contaminants that are stored in floodplains as well as the mine sites themselves.

“In 2012, we had the Ceredigion floods, where there was lead poisoning of cattle as a consequence of eating contaminated silage.”

And Dr Andrea Sartorius, Research Fellow, University of Nottingham, told the 2023 hearing: “These pollutants can get into the water, sediment, and soil, and once it is there, anything that is living in that can be exposed to the pollutants, and it can have a wide range of health effects. 

“Trace metals can cause infertility. They can cause cancer and can affect the development of the nervous system, muscle, and skeletal growth. 

“They can have significant effects, especially on children and young animals, and we do not sufficiently know — especially in the UK and in Wales — the extent of the effect that that is having.”

She added that the World Health Organisation in 2019 issued a statement saying that absolutely no level of lead was safe in the human body.

Ceredigion MP Ben Lake said at the time that “relevant bodies should convene without delay to identify action necessary to mitigate any risk to public health… There is not a moment to lose.”

The Plaid Cymru MP added: “The government should be leading the efforts and indeed the costs on this.”

Natural Resources Wales, the body responsible for environmental issues in the country, has warned that more frequent periods of extreme weather could potentially lead to increased erosion of contaminated material from abandoned mine sites and from historically contaminated sediments.

But with pressure mounting and little changing, local residents may fear it’s too little too late for the Welsh village once dubbed “Little Switzerland” by adoring tourists.