Park named after ‘De Schelde’ company doctor who laid the basis for asbestos ban

Vlissingen is to get a Doctor Stumphius Park. It is a well-deserved tribute to the former company doctor of ‘De Schelde’ who did pioneering research on the dangers of working with asbestos. “Partly thanks to Dr Stumphius’ discovery that asbestos cancer was very prevalent among ‘De Schelde’ employees, a total ban on the use of asbestos was imposed in the Netherlands in 1993,” says former ‘De Schelde’ employee Dick Schotte. The 97-year-old widow of the company doctor, Geerda Stumphius-Gerritsen, unveiled the nameplate of the park named after her late husband at the end of July.

“I remember when we had to convert a Belgian ferry from the RMT shipping company, the Reine Astrid, which sailed between Ostend and Dover, into a terminal,” says Dick. “The bow and stern had to be removed. That ship was really full of asbestos. On the work floor they called her Reine Asbestos. In those years we also regularly repaired steamships. The same story there: asbestos was everywhere on the pipes and turbines on those ships too.”

Yet it was already known in those years that asbestos was dangerous. Jan Stumphius, who was company doctor at ‘De Schelde’ between 1954 and 1979, had published a thesis in 1969 about asbestos in company workers, in which he pointed out the many cases of mesothelioma (asbestos cancer) among employees of ‘De Schelde’. “Thanks to his study, the asbestos issue was put on the national political agenda and members of parliament, trade unions and managements of shipyards eventually all became aware of the great health risks of this substance,” says Dick.

Dick worked at ‘Scheldepoort’ from 1971 to 1982. After a transfer of five years to a shipyard in Delfzijl, in 1987 he returned at the request of ‘De Schelde’ to the Vlissingen company and became Head of Production of New Building, where about 600 people worked in the production departments. “I did that for more than ten years. The asbestos problem was relatively less of an issue in new building, although we regularly found asbestos-containing material in the gaskets between pipe connections. And among those 600 people were many older employees who had worked with asbestos blankets in the past. Asbestos blankets were used to cover equipment to protect it from flying sparks when you were welding or cutting. Asbestos is in fact a wonderful material for catching and extinguishing sparks.”

Today, everyone takes it for granted that asbestos is a banned substance, a ban that we owe directly to Dr Stumphius’ thesis, although the ban did not come about until twenty-four years after that study was published. He now gets his tribute, and rightly so: a park bearing his name in the new ‘Schelde’ district that, appropriately enough, is taking shape behind the former ‘De Schelde’ head office between De Willem Ruysstraat, Paul Krugerstraat and Van Dishoeckstraat in Vlissingen.

The name Jan Stumphius is still familiar to many people in Vlissingen because the company doctor had not only employees of ‘De Schelde’ among his patients, but also their families due to his role of general practitioner.

Dick was present when the widow Stumphius unveiled the nameplate of the Dokter Stumphiuspark together with mayor Bas van den Tillaar on 29 July. Dick has known Mrs Stumphius personally since the early seventies. Her four children were also present at the unveiling.

Doctor Stumphius carried out pioneering work, Dick thinks. “He has ensured that everyone in the Netherlands now realises that working with asbestos entails health risks that cannot be ignored. But the danger of asbestos is still not over, because the period between exposure and the manifestation of the disease can be thirty years, and still every year about seven hundred people die in our country from lung cancer, a disease that is demonstrably caused by asbestos.”