Yesterday magistrates announced that a large section of the huge ILVA steel plant in Taranto in south Italy employing some 12,000 workers was to be seized, and thus closed, owing to very serious concerns over the health effects of pollution from the plant on the local population.
In the last seven years, over 11,500 people in the area have died from cardiovascular and respitarory illnesses which could have been caused by the Taranto plant.
Upon the announcement that a section of plant was to be seized, some 5,000 steelworkers marched upon the center of Taranto. Today, more steel workers took to the streets of Taranto in protest at what they see as a major threat to their livelihoods. Unions representing the displaced workers are calling upon Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti to intervene to save the steel plant which produces around 30% of Italy’s steel, and generates nearly 60% of the areas GDP. Some 80,000 jobs are thought to depend on the ILVA plant, so its closure would be an economic disaster for the Italian region of Puglia in which it is situated.
Prosecutors who sought the seizure of the plant claim they had no alternative in view of environmental reports which identified many health concerns. In addition to the seizure of areas of the plant, eight ILVA executives have been placed under house arrest.
Deadly Emissions
The Taranto steel plant has long been the source of controversy and emissions from the production facility are thought to have been the cause of major health problems for those living in its vicinity.
Reports confirm this to be the case defining the health situation in the Taranto area as ‘highly critical‘, hence the decision to close part of the facility.
Over a 13 year period 386 deaths have been directly attributed to emissions from the ILVA steelworks.
An epidemiological study of the area appears to imply that as many as 11,550 deaths in the last seven years could be linked to noxious emissions from the ILVA plant. 637 deaths were attributed to excessively high PM10 levels in the area. Also in the last seven years, just under 27,000 people have required some form of medical attention for ailments which investigators believe resulted from pollution caused by the plant. Children in the 0-14 age group living in the area have been suffering from cancers of the lung, larynx, bladder and increased incidences of leukemia, amongst other serious illnesses. Taranto has a population of around 196,000.
In 2002 the ILVA facility in Taranto emitted 30.6% of all dioxin emissions in Italy.
Despite growing concerns and complaints from the local population and environmentalists, very little had been done to establish whether or not the plant was the cause of many health issues until relatively recently.
Works to render the ILVA plant in Taranto more environmentally friendly are some 50 years overdue says a report on the Il Messaggero website. The cost of carrying out remedial works has been put at somewhere in the region of €330 million.
Two hundred workers from another ILVA plant in Genoa went on strike in sympathy for their troubled colleagues in Taranto.
The ILVA steel production facility is the biggest of its kind in Europe, and one of the largest in the world, according to the ILVA website.
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Featured image steel mill (not the Taranto steelworks) by Jesper Schoen
shirley says
Hi Alex,
Re Phurnacite Justice Action Group in Wales.
Please recheck our FB page. So much more info now.
Please help us? If you have any information please send it?
Thanks.
Alex Roe says
Sounds as if you should speak to Italians in Taranto – then head, together, to the EU or ECHR, perhaps.
There’s a report on the environmental damage caused by the Taranto steel plant but I don’t think it’s in English.
All the best,
Alex
wooddustaffected says
Alex thanks for looking at the page, it’s a work in progress still and quite new but we’re getting there. Please if you have the link to the health study that you mention it might help victims here in the UK to see justice done for those that our British justice system failed. There are reasons for that failure which we can’t go into just now on here but this information may help.
The figures for cancer at ILVA are truly shocking. Why does the world not learn from these avoidable tragedies? Why does there have to be so many victims, so many deaths before someone does something about it? It should be the case of early lessons from early warnings, not late lessons from early warnings. Why are those responsible not held to account for the arm that they knowingly inflict on others? So very wrong.
With the Phurnacite plant in Abercwmboi in Wales, UK there was also a forest of mature trees that became blackened stubs, it resembled a scene from the Battle of the Somme from WW1 it is said. They didn’t begin to grow back until after a decade after the plant closed. If it did this to mature trees then what level of harm has it done to residents living nearby who inhaled these emissions daily?
They have been denied a promised health study, makes you wonder what are they frightened it will reveal. They already have many cancers, and other diseases within employees, so why not in residents who were covered in this toxic dust daily too? There is already a cluster of birth defects similar to those that happened in the Corby birth defects case, where children were born with birth defects, limbs missing, etc., that was proven to be caused by them being exposed to the toxic dust whilst in the womb, dust that was re circulated when contaminated land from a steelworks that had a coking plant was remediated?
Hope to hear from you soon. Kindest regards….
wooddustaffected says
Hi Alex,
The link to contact you isn’t working. Do you have a link to the health study that you mention? I’m trying to help a group in the UK who lived nearby a coking plant, the Phurnacite coking plant, making smokeless fuel ovoids so that others could breath cleaner air when burning coal. It was described by Government’s own Inspectors as ‘Europe’s Dirtiest Factory’. It is said to have caused many cancers and other respiratory and other diseases. There was a court case, a large group action case for 300 or so employees but in my opinion it was a farce and was badly dealt with and the wrong ‘experts’ used and insufficient evidence put forward. There was so much that they could have put forward that would have made a difference, but didn’t do. No one knows why. Basically all the victims were badly let down but some more than others. The concentration at this plant has been on employees only and the court case was for employees only. Residents ill health has been ignored completely. There was even a cluster of birth defects too. They were promised an updated health study over a decade ago, after an initial one showed some shocking results, but it never happened. Their Action Group are now trying to resolve these issues.
In the court case they were turned down for bladder cancer bizarrely and one of the 2 skin cancer cases put forward, but the judge had only been told of 3 bladder cancer cases when in fact there were a great deal more than, and would have been even more than that if they’d included all cases up to the court date but they only went up to approx. 20 years before the court case. So had they included those in that time then the figure would have been far higher. The judge said that insufficient evidence had been put before her too, not that there wasn’t any, just that she had not been given it. She said (based on a so called ‘expert’s opinion) that there is nothing in a coking plant’s emissions that can have caused bladder cancers and also some other cancers too. I totally disagree. Not what I understand at all. What about naphthalene for example or benzene. The expert said that there would be no naphthalene in coke oven emissions but there are and this plant used it like water in buckets to clean tools in by hand, with no protection given. Here is a link to their new Face Book page, all articles are on there and we’re putting things on daily as soon as we can, including your article if that’s ok with you. Many residents don’t even realise the harm that has been caused to them.
https://www.facebook.com/PhurnaciteJusticeActionGroup
Would be grateful for that link if you have it. Thanks and Kindest regards. S. (Researcher)
Italian Notes says
I’m so outraged that this has being going on without public interference for so many years. Anyone can see ILVA poses a health hazard, and the dilemma of a rather big city dependent on a poisonous industry was described by Giancarlo De Cataldo in his novel ‘Terroni’ years ago. To think that one company has been allowed to keep bending the rules in spite of growing environmental concerns is a plain disgrace.
Alex Roe says
Yes, I had heard about the Taranto situation before but had not realised it was so serious.
I utterly agree with you that the company should not have been allowed to get away with poisoning the area for so long. In fact, I’ve just written something on that very subject.
Corruption Kills!
Best,
Alex