The true scandal behind Netflix’s ‘Toxic Town’
A new Netflix series puts a dramatic lens on one of the biggest environmental scandals in U.K. history — one that left dozens of children with birth defects
By CT Jones
In Netflix’s new series Toxic Town, viewers are sent head-first into the lives of three U.K. mothers: Susan McIntyre (Jodie Whitaker), Tracey Taylor (Aimee Lou Wood), and Maggie Mahon (Claudia Jessie). The women have varied lives in Corby, Northamptonshire, but one thing connects them: All of their children, born around the same time, have birth defects. And they don’t think it’s a coincidence.
The four-episode series that recently dropped on Netflix takes its inspiration from the real-life story of the Corby toxic waste scandal, a cleanup mismanagement that caused dozens of children in Corby to be born with birth defects like limb differences, club feet, underdeveloped hands, and shortened extremities. Written by Jack Thorne (His Dark Materials, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) and directed by Minkie Spiro (3 Body Problem, Better Call Saul), Toxic Town follows 20 mothers in Corby who gave birth in the 1980s and 1990s and blamed the Corby Borough Council — the local government body — for willfully mismanaged the disposal of toxic waste. This waste was spread around the town through mud and dust, which the mothers inhaled while their babies were in utero. It’s considered one of the biggest environmental scandals in U.K. history — one that wouldn’t have been discovered if these mothers hadn’t pushed for answers.
“It felt like this incredibly shameful thing happened and I had no idea,” Thorne told the BBC. “Bringing attention to that, not just for Corby, but the implication for every single one of us, felt [like] an important thing for TV to do.”
The Steelworks Reclamation
Corby’s problems started in 1980, when the U.K. faced declining jobs and profits in factories across the country. Corby’s steelworks was shut down and the local government was put in charge of demolishing and redeveloping its 680 acres. Manufacturing steel produces heavy metal byproducts, which were stored on the land in sealed pits. A major part of redevelopment required crews to reopen these pits and transport the material inside of them into sealed containers on the outside of town. The materials weren’t handled carefully, and toxic dust and mud were tracked throughout public spaces and streets in Corby — which expecting mothers inhaled. When a group of mothers realised their children had similar birth defects, they began a public campaign for the council to launch an investigation.
“You could taste it in the air; it was sour, gassy, and acidic,” mother and claimant Joy Shatford told The Independent in 2009. “Then it was common knowledge that this was because they were digging up the pits.”
“There were a lot of open-top lorries on the road and lots of dust. It was like a sandstorm sometimes, going across the car park,” another mother, Fiona Taylor, told The Guardian in 2009. “We never thought it was harmful. You think things are being done properly, don’t you?”
Toxic Town’s Real Life Case
The Netflix series charts the decade the Corby mothers searched for answers — including the negligence that lead them into a legal battle with the Corby council. Initial attempts at linking the birth defects to the ongoing reclamation of the steelworks were ignored by the council, who, according to the BBC, shared a 1999 Northamptonshire Health Authority study that found no cluster of birth defects. This study was challenged by the women’s lawyers and eventually discredited in court by an independent study, which found the birth defects in Corby were three times higher than the national average and surrounding areas.
Additional research also linked the birth defects to the heavy metal cadmium, which is known to cause birth defects in animals. The case was sent to London’s High Court. During the discovery period, which required the council to produce documents surrounding the steelworks cleanup, several previously confidential audits of the steelworks site were included which describe the construction and cleanup work as “cavalier in approach,” with “a total lack of supervision” which “illustrates incompetence by the officers concerned, bordering on negligence,” The Guardian reported. One employee even testified that a wheel wash they were supposed to use was so contaminated by toxic water that drivers realised it was messing up their trucks and drove around it.
Judge Justice Akenhead ruled in favor of the Corby mothers, and after the council tried and failed to file an appeal, the case was settled out of court in 2010, according to the BBC. “The council recognises that it made mistakes in its clean-up of the former British Steel site years ago and extends its deepest sympathy to the children and their families,” Corby council chief executive Chris Mallender said at the time of the settlement. “The case remains one of the definitive and landmark environmental waste cases in the U.K. And for the mothers involved, the settlement represents a positive conclusion to their fight for justice.
“It’s a good outcome after a long battle,” mother Louise Carley told The Guardian in 2010. “This is closure, it means we can move on with our lives. We know what happened and we know why and we can get on with our future.”