From ‘Dark Waters’ to ‘Erin Brockovich’, Hollywood has done its best in recent years to highlight cases where locals in the United States are poisoned by businesses … generationally.
Now Denmark seems to have its own case in Slagelse Municipality in West Zealand. Oddly enough, however, it is not local drinking water that has been polluted, but the livestock.
For over a decade, members of a national association association Korsør Kogræsser -og Naturplejeforening (KKN) have eaten meat bred on a local meadow saturated with carcinogenic PFOS – 63 times more than the tolerable amount, reports TV2.
It has ignited a cancer boom under society, and the Ministry of Environment has now been urged to intervene.
No drinking water … for humans
The Danish Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental agency denies responsibility for the situation, which appears to have been going on for at least 15 years.
In 2014, a Danish Environmental Protection Agency report highlighted that there could be problems with pollution in the area related to a fire school training school, which was closed in 2008, but nothing was done because the area did not produce drinking water – or at least drinking water for humans.
Cattle grazing on a meadow connected to the source of pollution by a stream drank it daily, but no one thought to tell the KKN members.
Not only does PFOS increase the risk of cancer, but it can cause hormonal disorders, weaken the immune system and lead to children being born with a lower birth weight.
It is a bitter blow to KKN members who thought their meat consumption was a healthy solution that was far better than visiting the local supermarket.
Groundwater not the ground itself …
KNN chairman Kenneth Nielsen, who has eaten the meat for 15 years, cannot understand why nothing was done in 2014.
“It is unbearable to think about what we could have saved if the right authorities had followed this to the door,” he said.
The report recommended Slagelse Municipality to specifically investigate drinking water and groundwater for pollution, he added, but there were none.
“Our focus has been on drinking water and not on soil pollution,” explained municipal employee Jette Jungsberg.
“This is what we have been recommended by the authorities, so we have followed the authorities’ recommendations.”
Now a question for the ministry
Jane Hansen, a manager at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, insists, however, that the report warned that there was a risk to local soil.
Environment Minister Lea Wermelin has now been summoned for a hearing on the matter.
On 10 March, Region Zealand set up a working group to assess how citizens who have eaten the meat can help.
It operates on the basis of the Department of Occupational and Social Medicine at Holbæk Hospital.
Source: The Nordic Page