Yesterday afternoon, Sylvie had not received all the results from her family. But those received were hardly encouraging: all were greater than 10 nanograms of Pfas per liter of blood, including one over 20 and another over 30. However, the alert thresholds are set at 2 µg/l , to avoid any adverse effects following exposure to PFAS. Those located between 2 µg/l and 20 µg/l are in a risk zone and those above will be invited to follow the recommendations which will be revealed this Tuesday.
PFAS pollution, here are the risks and recommendations for your health: “Two groups of the population must be particularly protected”
Yesterday, however, many of them did not receive their highly anticipated results. “We are left waiting, which generates stress, anxiety and worry,” Yves told us. I haven’t received my results so I don’t know if I’m at risk or not.”
Threats to residents who disclose their results!
And those who received their results obtained them under threat: “We remind you that you have signed a certificate of informed consent in order to participate in the study and that you are not authorized to disclose information relating to the study ( and therefore your results) before the official release of the study reports”, wrote the Scientific Institute of Public Service (Issep), in bold in its email.
A lack of transparency towards the press and a cacophony towards those mainly concerned which Philippe bypassed. Shortly before the elections, he demanded that Issep give him its results. “Even if the tests were carried out as part of a public study, Issep could not refuse to give them to me,” says the man who was worried about his six-year-old daughter. She goes to school in Chièvres and drinks tap water every day. She has been drinking possibly contaminated water for 3 years.”
Too many PFAS “eternal pollutants” in one in six water samples in Flanders
The results are in: if his daughter has a Pfas level in her blood slightly higher than 2 µg/l, Philippe and his wife have levels much higher. Nearly 15 µg/l for the Chiévrois. “I’m not worried about myself. I am especially relieved for my daughter because we do not know what Pfas can generate in her later.
“For two years, we have been made to drink water that we know is contaminated”
At Virginie, on the other hand, we had not yet received the results yesterday afternoon. But she says “no longer have any illusions. 4 years ago, my daughter had a blood test. The samples were reanalyzed for Pfas in 2023. And they were well above standards. For her, we are going to enter into a process of health prevention (regular screenings for cancer, cholesterol, etc.) which is abnormal to undergo at the age of 20. We have also all taken blood tests: there is no doubt that we will be well above the recommendations.”
According to Virginie, the Chièvres military base already warned of water contamination in 2017. “But we continued to be made to drink potentially contaminated water. And again since April 2023, despite tests which confirmed the presence of Pfas. This is insane.”
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Administrator of the SOS Notre Santé ASBL Facebook group, Geoffrey Pessemier received his results yesterday at 10:38 a.m. “As we are prohibited from communicating them to the press, I can just tell you that the trend in the results communicated to me is not good: some have results sometimes higher than 50 µg/l, more than 25 times above the norm!”
“Results unreadable for some people”
Geoffrey denounces the lack of readability of the results. “There are numbers and color codes corresponding to percentiles and averages. It is absolutely not readable for everyone. Why didn’t they just simply communicate rates?”
He also denounces the slowness of results. “I took a private test on November 27 and received the results four days later. Here, it took 7 months to obtain results which, in the end, we do not know what to do with them. People don’t know whether they should be worried or not, whether they should go to their doctor or not. All this generates a totally unacceptable climate of anxiety.”
