Pregnant Stefanie bought a house near 3M factory last year:... (Zwijndrecht)

Speaking of bad luck: a pregnant woman bought a house in Zwijndrecht last year, just a few hundred meters from the 3M factory, which now appears to be a major source of PFOS pollution. Stefanie Bellinckx told her story on Wednesday evening in the VRT program ‘The appointment’. Striking: the soil certificate issued by OVAM is silent about pollution, while at that time the waste company had actually already wanted to communicate to the general public about the problem.

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jvhSource: VRT NWS

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Stefanie Bellinkx’s house is about 750 meters from the 3M factory. The blood test that the Flemish Agency for Care and Health organized in recent weeks – and which showed that more than 9 out of 10 local residents have too much PFOS in the blood – shows that she is in risk class 2. “That means that health risks cannot be ruled out,” says Bellinkx. “My values are still low right now. But can we continue to live there? I have a child in the belly and a child of 2.5 years. I don’t want them to be poisoned.”

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So Bellinckx would be better off moving. But then she would probably have to swallow a heavy financial burden, because as other local residents are wondering these days: “Who is going to buy our house now?”

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In addition, Bellinckx questions the role of waste company OVAM. “We bought that house in August 2020 with a blank soil certificate. That is, there was no knowledge of soil pollution. Now we know they did.”

(Read more below the video)

OVAM issues a blank soil certificate if a soil is not included in the soil information register. A soil is included therein if OVAM receives ‘relevant soil investigation data or information about the presence of activities with a risk of soil contamination’, according to the website of the Flemish government.

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But in June it became known that OVAM was already aware of the pollution in 2017. Initially, it also wanted to inform the population of the problem, but that plan was blocked from a political angle, according to the top woman of OVAM.

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“I didn’t even know 3M existed a year ago. Everything just surfaced in May of this year. It now appears that that certificate should not have been blank at all. I would never have bought that house if I had known that there was pollution there, and that it would be so harmful to my children,” Bellinkx concludes.