ANP
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 10:11
The Amsterdam law firm Knoops wants to enforce measures against the amount of PFAS in the soil with a mass claim against the State. Various groups participate in the claim, such as SchipholWatch and the Volunteer Fire Department.
There is too much PFAS in the soil in hundreds of places in the Netherlands. If large quantities enter our food through, for example, irrigation of arable land, the substance can cause cancer and other diseases. According to the RIVM, the Dutch are already ingesting too much PFAS.
PFAS is a collective name for thousands of chemicals that are not degradable in nature. The substance has been used since the 1950s in non-stick coatings in pans and to make rainwear waterproof. The substance is also used in lubricants, packaging and fire-fighting foam. PFAS has also recently been found in hobby eggs.
RIVM applies a specific limit for certain variants. If this is exceeded, the substance is bad for your health. In 2010, a variant of PFAS, PFOS, was banned across the EU. There is also a European process to stop the production of PFAS completely before 2025.
Knoops is filing a lawsuit to encourage the State to intervene more quickly. Action group SchipholWatch joins the mass claim because large quantities of PFAS can be found in places around the airport. The Zwanenburgbaan runway alone would involve at least 200,000 tons.
The West Friesland Elderly Network Foundation also says otherwise The Telegraph to join Knoops’ campaign. For example, the health of the residents in the village of Westwoud is not going well, says chairman Willem Bakker. “We have 764 mailboxes in the village. Behind 254 front doors, someone has died of cancer in the past twenty years.”
The Union for Civilian and Military Defense Personnel is also participating, because military training areas are often contaminated with PFAS. The association hopes to gain more clarity through the lawsuit. For the Volunteer Fire Brigade Association, this involves clear guidelines and structural research into the substance that firefighters come into contact with through fire-fighting foam and fire-resistant clothing.
Court case
A solution for the large amounts of PFAS is not easy to find. This is mainly because there are no clear regulations on how to handle the substance. Cleaning the remains is almost impossible, experts say, and the effect of a soil cleaning installation has not yet been proven.
The lawyers will come out with the official claim “shortly”, lawyer Geert-Jan Knoops said in the NOS Radio 1 News. “We are still making preparations, with a whole team of lawyers and experts.”
2024-03-16 09:11:35
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