Poison Water

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2025

Documentary
Lifestyle

Summary

The story of Britain's biggest mass poisoning, when a toxic cocktail poured out of the taps of up to 20,000 homes in northern Cornwall in 1988, changing lives for ever. What began with a misplaced delivery to a water treatment facility ended with people across a community consuming water with aluminium levels thousands of times higher than acceptable limits

Review

David Butcher

Rising bills, sewage spills, financial chicanery: the reputation of privatised water companies could hardly sink lower. Or could it…? This programme looks back to a 1988 water poisoning scandal in Cornwall that occurred shortly before privatisation but flowed into it like a toxic tributary.

“It’s all about money, power and greed,” says a Cornish resident, summing up the appalling saga. In July 1988, a batch of chemicals was accidentally poured straight into the water supply of 20,000 people near Camelford, but the local water authority’s response was lethally slow and misguided. We hear clear evidence that residents weren’t warned of the health dangers because the incident couldn’t be allowed to spook City investors in the run-up to privatisation.

Instead, executives appeared on TV telling users the water was “perfectly safe” when in fact, drinking it would have health impacts lasting years. In some cases — though the causal link is hard to prove — it likely contributed to premature deaths. We hear from Michael Howard, water minister at the time, interviewed today and still arguing that privatisation was “a qualified success”.