D’Hollander is now 40 and has three children. In 2012 she wrote to the mayor of Zwijndrecht, warning him that local eggs posed a serious problem. She immediately tried to limit her exposure by avoiding locally produced eggs-she thought that might be the key contamination route, because the chemical binds to proteins. She had about 300 micrograms of it per liter in her blood, more than 60 times the level recommended as safe today by the European Union.Īt the time, she was pregnant with her second child. PFOS-perfluorooctanesulfonic acid-is referred to as a forever chemical, because it accumulates in soil, rivers, and drinking water and is almost impossible to get rid of. The setting, in the suburb of Zwijndrecht, is bucolic and lovely, save for the 3M plant across a highway.ĭuring her research, she discovered that eggs from birds close to the plant had some of the highest concentrations ever reported of PFOS, an ingredient in fabric coatings and firefighting foams. in biology and living with her parents and daughter in the farmhouse. More than 4,500 other families face a similar fate, with varying depths of soil to be carted away to a still undetermined location.ĭ’Hollander knew something was wrong a decade ago. Belgian officials have ordered 3M to draw up a plan by July 1 to scrape off as much as 5 feet of soil on D’Hollander’s 2.5 acres. The soil around Wendy D’Hollander’s Belgian farmhouse is so saturated with the chemical PFOS, produced in Antwerp by 3M Co., that she’s in what’s called the red zone.
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