Independent Journalism • Global Truth
- Around 40 barrels of 1988 firefighting foam have been removed from the former Islip fuel depot in Oxfordshire. - Campaigners' UKAS-accredited lab tests and developer Newcore's own tests disagree sharply on PFAS levels — about 98% apart. - The BBC has not independently verified either set of results; the Environment Agency's Chemical Compliance team has contacted the site owners. - Newcore, which took over the 33-acre former RAF/Esso site in 2012, plans to regenerate it with new homes.
Barrels of chemicals left at a former fuel depot in Oxfordshire have been removed, after campaigners raised the alarm — as reported by the BBC — about suspected "forever chemical" contamination at the site.
The Islip Fuel Depot, a former RAF and Esso fuel storage and transfer facility, was found to contain around 40 barrels of firefighting foam liquid manufactured in 1988 and stored at what was once RAF Islip. Firefighting foams of that era commonly contained PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, the family of synthetic chemicals nicknamed "forever chemicals" because their carbon-fluorine bonds barely break down in the environment.
The discovery has set up a dispute over how contaminated the site really is. Campaigners commissioned their own sampling, analysed by a UKAS-certified laboratory — the national accreditation standard that gives results formal standing. The developer that owns the site, Newcore, carried out its own testing, which it says found PFAS at 64.1 micrograms per kilogram — roughly 98 per cent lower than the campaigners' figures. The BBC has not independently verified either set of laboratory results, and the gap between them remains unresolved.
What both sides appear to agree on is that the barrels needed to go. They have now been removed from the site, eliminating what campaigners described as the suspected source of the contamination.
PFAS were invented in the 1930s and used for decades in products prized for resisting water, grease and heat — nonstick pans, waterproof clothing, food packaging and stain-resistant carpets. From the 1970s, concerns emerged about their toxicity, confirmed by scientists in the early 2000s, and research has since linked some PFAS to health effects including impacts on the immune system, cholesterol levels and certain cancers.
Firefighting foams used by the military and at airports were among the most concentrated sources. The foams needed to smother fuel fires fast, and PFAS gave them that film-forming power. The legacy is a string of contaminated sites around former military bases worldwide, where decades of training exercises soaked the chemicals into soil and groundwater.
Because PFAS do not break down, contamination does not fade with time. Removing 40 barrels of 1980s foam liquid eliminates the concentrated source — but it does not answer the question of what has already leached into the ground over the decades the barrels sat there. That is the question the duelling lab results are really about.
!A single storage tank at a fuel depot
Image: Stephen Craven / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Newcore, which took over the 33-acre site in 2012, says it had already identified potential contamination before the campaigners' findings. The company is promoting the site for redevelopment: its current proposals describe 96 new homes built to low-energy design standards, with a high proportion of affordable housing — the BBC reports the planned development would include 50 per cent affordable homes, while Newcore's own site materials cite 60 per cent affordable under national planning definitions. (The figures refer to evolving proposals; the BBC's reporting is the basis for the 50 per cent figure used here.)
For a developer, legacy contamination is both a liability and a planning hurdle. Under the contaminated-land regime, the polluter pays where they can be found — and a former RAF and Esso facility has a long chain of former operators. Newcore's position is that it was already alive to the issue; the campaigners' position is that independent testing tells a worse story than the developer's own numbers.
The Environment Agency's Chemical Compliance team has contacted the site owners — a significant escalation. The Agency is the environmental regulator for England, and its involvement means the dispute is no longer just between campaigners and a developer. Chemical compliance officers deal with exactly this category of problem: persistent pollutants, contested data and the question of who is responsible for investigation and clean-up.
The timing matters nationally, too. In February 2026 the UK government published its first-ever PFAS Plan, describing these chemicals as "one of the most pressing chemical challenges of our time" and committing to new technical guidance for dealing with PFAS contamination. The Islip case is precisely the kind of site that plan will have to grapple with: a brownfield with housing ambitions, contested science and a community watching closely.
Islip is far from the only place in Britain confronting the PFAS legacy. In February 2026, the UK government published its first-ever PFAS Plan, describing these chemicals as "one of the most pressing chemical challenges of our time" and committing to develop new technical guidance for dealing with PFAS contamination in soil and groundwater. The plan reflects a growing official recognition that the problem is bigger than a handful of industrial sites.
The science has been moving in one direction for years. PFAS have been found everywhere from drinking water and food packaging to the marine environment — and in the blood of populations living near chemical plants — a recent investigation found the "forever chemical" PFOA in the blood of UK residents near a former chemical factory in Thornton-Cleveleys, Lancashire. Researchers at Oxford Brookes University have been developing new reactor technology to strip PFAS from water, while scientists at Oxford and Birmingham universities have demonstrated ways to actually destroy the carbon-fluorine bonds — the "forever" part — rather than simply moving the chemicals elsewhere.
Regulation is catching up, but slowly. The European Union has been working towards broad PFAS restrictions, and the UK's new plan is a first step towards a domestic framework. For sites like Islip, the practical question is what the rules will require of landowners and developers: how much testing, what clean-up standards, and who pays when the original polluter is a government department or a company that sold the site decades ago.
Removing the barrels was the easy part. If PFAS have migrated into the soil and groundwater at Islip — and four decades of storage make that a question that must be answered, not assumed away — remediation is a far bigger undertaking.
There is, as the government's own planning documents acknowledge, currently no proven, cost-effective method for removing PFAS from soil at scale. Options include excavating contaminated soil and treating it off-site, containing it with engineered barriers, or using emerging destruction technologies such as the mechanochemical and flash-heating methods now being demonstrated in laboratories. All are expensive, and all require reliable data on the extent of contamination first.
That is why the gap between the two sets of lab results matters so much. A reading of 64.1 micrograms per kilogram suggests a manageable problem; the campaigners' figures — roughly fifty times higher — suggest something far more serious. Until independent sampling closes that gap, neither the developer's regeneration plans nor the community's peace of mind can rest on solid ground.
Three questions now hang over the site. First, which lab results reflect reality — a question that only further independent sampling can settle. Second, whether contamination has migrated beyond the barrels into soil and groundwater, which would determine the scale and cost of any remediation. And third, whether the planned homes can proceed, and on what terms, given that future residents could otherwise inherit the toxic legacy.
For the campaigners, the removal of the barrels is a win — the suspected source is gone. For Newcore, it removes an awkward symbol from a site it wants to regenerate. But the numbers still do not agree, the regulator is now involved, and until independent testing closes the gap between the two sets of results, the dispute over Islip's soil is far from over.
*More science and environment news at Verity. About our reporting.*
PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — are a family of synthetic chemicals built on exceptionally strong carbon-fluorine bonds. They resist water, grease and heat, which made them useful in products from nonstick pans to firefighting foam, but they barely break down in the environment.
Campaigners discovered around 40 barrels of firefighting foam liquid, manufactured in 1988 and stored at what was once RAF Islip. Foams of that era commonly contained PFAS, making the barrels the suspected source of contamination. They have now been removed.
Campaigners commissioned sampling analysed by a UKAS-certified laboratory; developer Newcore's own testing found PFAS at 64.1 micrograms per kilogram — roughly 98% lower. The BBC has not independently verified either set of results, so the true picture remains unresolved.
The barrels have been removed, and the Environment Agency's Chemical Compliance team has contacted the site owners — a significant regulatory escalation. Further independent sampling would be needed to settle which lab results reflect reality.
Newcore is promoting the 33-acre former RAF and Esso fuel storage site for regeneration. Its proposals describe new low-energy homes with a high proportion of affordable housing — the BBC reports 50% affordable, while Newcore's own materials cite 60% under national planning definitions.
Scientists using high-tech drone footage found at least 97% of corals dead on North Point Reef near Lizard Island within three months — one of the worst bleaching events the Great Barrier Reef has ever suffered.
A green sea turtle fitted with a satellite tag swam 3,979 km from the Chagos Islands to the coast of Somalia — believed to be the furthest migration ever recorded for the species — and exposed the limits of marine protected areas.
Around the year 1000 — nearly five centuries before Columbus sailed — Norse seafarers crossed the North Atlantic and set foot in North America, leaving a camp at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, that archaeologists uncovered in 1960.
The aurora borealis lit up skies across the UK over the weekend of 9–10 October after a burst of solar activity, with sightings reported as far south as Devon, Hampshire and Kent — and the Met Office says more displays could follow until Tuesday.