RSC partners with Hollywood star Michael Sheen and investigative reporters for new series of award-winning BBC podcast 'Buried'

This second series is centred on the work of environmental whistleblower Douglas Gowan, who sought to shine a spotlight on toxic chemicals escaping from a landfill near farmland in Wales in the 1960s and who recorded his final testimony with Sheen in 2017.

Nearly 60 years on from Gowan's initial discovery, the podcast revealed just how prevalent some banned polychlorinated-biphenyls [PCBs] are in our society. Investigative reporters and producers Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor approached us about the project as they looked for answers.

We supported the testing conducted in the making of the programme, led by Dr David Megson from Manchester Metropolitan University and our Environmental Policy Group. The results were shocking as research conducted for the show found levels of PCBs in shop-bought fish that were so high they breached official health advice - and in one instance broke the law.

"I think the most shocking thing that has been uncovered has been the scale of the problems, and the scale of the potential dangers to people," said Sheen.

"It's not just about this particular aspect of it but what this is connected to – the idea of ‘forever chemicals’, the idea of toxic chemicals that don’t degrade; how prevalent and how much it is in our lives.

"It’s so overwhelming, once you start to discover the truth about this, that I can see why it makes people not do anything about it - because it’s too much, it’s almost too much for our brain to take in, so that was the most shocking aspect of it for me."