Mass Claim Against 3M: High PFAS Levels Cause Health Concerns and Excessive Neighbor Nuisance in Belgium

About 200 interested people attended an information evening about a mass claim against the American chemical company 3M last night. The driving force is Kurt Verstraete (52), who was recently proved right by a judge and his family. “There are a lot of concerns here.”

“We came to live here in 2013, especially for the vegetable garden and the animals,” says Kurt Verstraete from Zwijndrecht in Flanders.

Never warned

At that moment, Verstraete thought he had found a true paradise for himself and his family. He bought a house with a lot of space for a beautiful vegetable garden and some chickens and goats. “We found what we were looking for here. No one ever warned us or said anything about the 3M factory.”

That while that factory is only a kilometer away. In a so-called soil certificate that they received when purchasing the house, there was also nothing about contamination of the soil.

‘Forever chemicals’

In 2021, the unrest in Belgium started when high PFAS concentrations were measured in soil and water samples around the 3M factory in Zwijndrecht. PFAS is a collective term for a group of thousands of chemicals that are also called ‘forever chemicals’, because they hardly break down in the environment and are linked to health problems. They can damage the immune system and cause cancer.

Very soon, very high PFAS values ​​were also measured in the garden and in the blood of the Verstraetes, says Verstraete. “During a blood test on my wife, it emerged that she had values ​​​​above 700 micrograms per liter. I myself had a private blood analysis done and I was above 1000.” And that is incredibly high for both, knowing that the limit value in Belgium is 5 micrograms per litre.

Excessive neighbor nuisance

The Verstraete family decided not to let it go and called in a lawyer to file a case against 3M. They went to the so-called justice of the peace, a low-threshold judge in Belgium for, for example, neighbor disputes, because they wanted to avoid years of legal proceedings. And the judge ruled in her favour.

“We have been accepted as neighbors of 3M by the justice of the peace and it has been determined that there is excessive nuisance to neighbors,” says Kurt Verstraete. The justice of the peace awarded compensation of 2000 euros, 500 euros per family member. This compensation is open-ended, which means that 3M will have to pay for all possible future costs such as illness or a decrease in value of the house when it is sold.

Massaclaim

The verdict in the case of Kurt Verstraete was big news in Belgium and forms the basis of the mass claim that is now being prepared against 3M by citizens’ collective Darkwater 3M. About 1500 people have already registered to receive more information and last Thursday evening about 200 local residents came to a special information evening.

Meanwhile, Kurt Verstraeten still lives in the same place with his family, despite the PFAS. Nothing is eaten from the vegetable garden anymore. “At the moment we don’t want to sell the house either, because it entails a lot of hassle. We are located in Zwijndrecht, the children have their friends here, we have our friends here. We are close to Antwerp, so the location is very well. And at the moment nobody wants to buy our house.”

22 thousand trucks

Next year Kurt Verstraeten’s garden will be cleaned up to 70 centimetres, just like many other gardens in Zwijndrecht. “The first phase of the remediation will start early next year and will run until 2028.”

“We are lucky to be one of the first remediations, but in total there are about 903 plots being remediated. To give you an idea, that means that 450,000 tons of soil must be removed and preferably the same amount of soil then good soil must be brought back. This is a huge action that must be done. That is 22 thousand trucks.”