LUC VERKOUTEREN
“Just for the noise,” he says.
It is a clarification that is needed here more often than elsewhere.
Luc Verkouteren has been a general practitioner in the region for over twenty years. Behind him hang two stethoscopes; on the cabinet, plastic lungs and medical textbooks. On the wall, a photograph of a tanker on the North Sea Canal, with smoking chimneys in the background.
“You see here what a region breathes,” he says.
The RIVM has established that the population in the IJmond is less healthy. Colds, back pain, high blood pressure. But also things that do not fit into statistics: stinging eyes, heavy air, children who suddenly sleep better and cough less when on holiday.
Disease rarely has a single cause, he says. But even when you subtract the usual factors — age, smoking, heredity — this region still stands out.
The reports have been there for years. He no longer reads them.
“There is no flag on a tumour,” he says, “but the pattern is clear.”
From his desk, he takes out a small jar filled with grey-black dust and holds it up to the light.
“This comes straight from the floor of a Tata factory,” he says. “I’ve been there. It’s everywhere. It becomes airborne. That cannot be healthy.”
He says it calmly, without outrage — as if pointing out something that no longer requires explanation.
He does not call himself an opponent of steel. He drives a car, buys goods in tins, understands the importance of work.
What troubles him is how health and regulation are treated as separate domains.
Company measurements repeatedly prove too optimistic. Differences are explained away as “methodological variations”. Exceedances remain without consequence for months.
He shrugs.
“If I throw my rubbish over the fence into my neighbour’s garden, it’s solved within a week. Here, it can take years.”
With a northerly wind, a heavy chemical smell hangs in the streets. Residents wipe black dust from their windowsills, avoid hanging out white laundry, keep their windows closed — even on hot days.
“It’s always been like that,” he often hears.
“Yes,” he replies, “but that doesn’t make it normal.”
Some effects are immediate: less particulate matter, fewer complaints.
Others move slowly, over time — far enough removed to forget their origin.
In reports, it is called two months of life lost.
He sees something else: years that grow heavier, bodies that wear out sooner. A trajectory that deviates slightly at first, only to end far off course.
“It’s not that we don’t know,” he says.
“We simply do too little with that knowledge.”
On responsibility, he is brief.
Enforce the rules. Not in five years — now.
He lists the coke plants, the fines, the delayed letters like diagnoses.
“If a bakery operated like this, it would have been closed long ago.”
But decisions are made elsewhere; here, the conversation remains.
At home, it is rarely discussed — not out of fear, but because everyone knows how complex it becomes the moment you begin. Family members work at the plant, as in so many households.
He recalls how it started: a village meeting, a question — what do the doctors think?
No one spoke.
Doctors in Wijk aan Zee are concerned, but no longer dare to speak out. Verkouteren, practising in IJmuiden, does.
“I thought: then I’ll say something.”
“Since then, I’m the GP with an opinion.”
He does not call it activism. He describes what he observes daily: what the factory emits, and how it manifests in bodies and health.
It is not about being right.
It is about health.
Medicine can treat consequences, not the source. First ensure people can live healthily.
Everything else follows.