The Environment Agency is considering legal action against Huntsman Polyurethanes in Teesside for a potential breach of its environmental licence over benzene emissions, a failure that constitutes a criminal offence under UK law. The regulator told the Guardian it is weighing further enforcement action with its legal team and has notified the UK Health Security Agency and the Health and Safety Executive to assess public and occupational health risks The Guardian, 2026-08-04.

Huntsman Polyurethanes, a petrochemical manufacturer producing chemical inputs for plastics at the Teesside chemical cluster in Redcar, North Yorkshire, is part of Huntsman Corporation. The publicly traded global chemicals producer reported revenues of $6 billion in 2025. Its Wilton site is a global supplier of aniline into upstream polyurethanes The Guardian, 2026-08-04. The facility is regulated under environmental permit EPR/BS8656IX and holds Top Tier status under the Control of Major Accident Hazards regime, subjecting it to joint inspections by the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency Environment Agency consultation, 2024-01-11.

The benzene emission problem traces to 2023, when Huntsman decommissioned a process that had been reducing its benzene air emissions and replaced it with an alternative method controlled by a third party. Environment Agency documents show the new process 'periodically paused', causing benzene to vent directly to the atmosphere. The Agency was aware of the problem in 2023 but did not investigate until 2026. According to Agency records, benzene emissions from the site rose from 13 tonnes in 2022 to 17 tonnes in 2024 The Guardian, 2026-08-04.

Benzene is classified as carcinogenic to humans and causes leukaemia. The World Health Organization states there is no safe level of exposure. In a March 2026 inspection report, the Environment Agency recorded several permit breaches related to the emissions. Following that inspection, Huntsman was instructed to carry out dispersion modelling to assess the impact. The modelling found 'significant' breaches of legally binding air quality standards in all scenarios considered. In one scenario, benzene emissions were predicted to exceed the 24-hour air quality limit by 933% The Guardian, 2026-08-04.

The Agency's internal review of that modelling found the impacts to be 'not insignificant' but concluded that predicted environmental concentrations remain below the relevant environmental standards. A Huntsman spokesperson said the benzene emissions were not illegal and were 'fully compliant with our permit conditions' The Guardian, 2026-08-04. David Santillo, a senior scientist with the Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter, described the emissions as 'very significant' and called the Agency's slow action a 'travesty' The Guardian, 2026-08-04.

Separately, the Environment Agency published a draft decision advertisement in March 2026 for a variation of Huntsman's environmental permit concerning direct emissions of chromium and nickel to a receiving water body gov.uk, 2026-03-20.

The enforcement threat arrives against a precarious operational backdrop for the Teesside site. In March 2026, Peter Huntsman, the US owner of the Huntsman site, said he would close the facility if energy costs stayed high for the following three months The Guardian, 2026-03-15. The BBC reported that Huntsman is considering closing one of its last remaining UK sites because of a 'hostile business environment', a move that would risk about 100 jobs BBC, 2026-03-16.

Looking at what this means for regulators and industry, the case exposes a tension between the UK's industrial competitiveness agenda and its environmental enforcement framework. The Agency's three-year gap between awareness and investigation, set against a four-tonne increase in annual benzene emissions, raises questions about regulatory capacity at Top Tier COMAH sites where operational restructuring can alter emissions profiles. The discrepancy between Huntsman's compliance claim and the Agency's documented permit breaches, alongside the 933% exceedance scenario in the company's own modelling, points to a contested regulatory boundary that legal proceedings would need to resolve. For a site whose owner has already signalled potential closure, the enforcement decision carries consequences that extend beyond the facility's fence line into the broader debate over the future of the UK's remaining petrochemical manufacturing base.