Water heavily polluted with PFAS in 15 km radius around Dordrecht chemical plant: report

Water in ditches, swimming lakes, and natural lakes within a radius of at least 15 kilometers around the Chemours factory in Dordrecht is heavily contaminated with PFAS. In the entire area, the PFAS concentrations are way above what the RIVM considers safe, in some cases thousands of times above the standard, Zembla reports based on measurements by the Riveierenland Water Board.

The Chemours factory, previously DuPont, in Dordrecht knowingly leached the toxic and carcinogenic PFAS variant PROA into the water and air for decades. It only stopped using the hazardous substance in 2012 when the government strictly regulated it. The chemical plant replaced PFOA with GenX - a PFAS variant also considered a “very worrying substance” by the public health and environment institute RIVM.

The Rivierenland Water Board has been measuring PFAS concentrations in the area northeast of the Chemours plant since 2018. But the results have never been shared with the general public, according to Zembla.

The program asked Chiel Jonker, an environmental chemist at Utrecht University, to look at the Water Board’s measurements and calculate the average values for each location over the past five years.

The pollution is worst in Sliedrecht and Papendrecht. Water in ditches one kilometer from the factory contained 13,000 times more PFOA than the RIVM considers safe. The GenX concentrations were up to 58 times higher than the safe limit. New homes are currently being built at this location.

“It is unbelievable. These really are shockingly high concentrations. I would never want to live there,” Jonker said.

A little further on are several vegetable gardens watered from the surrounding ditches. In those ditches, the PFOA concentration is over 2,000 times above the safe standard, and the GenX levels are seven times too high. In the popular swimming and recreational lake Lammetjeswiel in Alblasserdam, about 8 kilometers from Chemours, the PFOA levels are 250 times above safe and GenX levels six times.

The safe standard for surface water is also exceeded almost everywhere throughout the Ablasserwaard, a region northeast of the factory with many farms. “If you use that heavily polluted water for the crops that grow there, PFAS will end up in people again. Cows eat the grass, and in this way, it also enters the food chain. And the ditch water that is brought onto the land can also leach through the land into the groundwater, and that groundwater may be used for drinking water,” Jonker said.

Zembla also submitted the data to PFAS expert Philippe Grandjean. According to the program, the doctor and professor of environmental epidemiology was horrified. “These figures are really gigantic. At that ditch in Sliedrecht, for example, we are talking about thousands of nanograms per liter. Those are immensely high concentrations. As far as I am concerned, measures must be taken as soon as possible to clear this up.”

For some time, there have been concerns about PFAS pollution of the Westerschelde in Zeeland, which mainly originates from the 3M chemical company in Belgium. Minister Mark Harbers of Infrastructure recently held 3M liable for that pollution.

According to Chiel Jonker, the pollution in Zeeland is nothing compared to the situation in Dordrecht. “This situation is many times more serious than the Westerschelde. The concentrations there are really peanuts compared to what has been measured around Chemours.”

Zembla asked Chemours why it never published the water board’s figures. The company responded that it was not their responsibility to do so. The chemical plant did not answer Zembla’s questions about cleaning up its pollution.

When asked about the extremely high concentration of PFOA and GenX in the waters around it, Chemours referred to a 2020 analysis by the RIVM that stated that there were no health risks. “Chemous did not mention that the RIVM used standards for this that are now outdated and have been significantly lowered by the RIVM,” Zembla said.