Italy: operations at Ilva Tarente will resume if it gets up to date

The two ordinances, signed on July 26 by the judge for preliminary investigations of the Tarente Court, Patrizia Todisco, within the framework of the investigation on the “environmental disaster” the steel plant caused in the region, acted as earthquakes.  The first ordered the sequestration of 6 hot facilities of Ilva Tarente (with no possibility of using them).  The second put under house arrest eight defendants, including former and current managers, including Emilio Riva, the eighty-year-old leader of Ilva Spa until May 2010.  They are accused of being responsible for a voluntary disaster (colposo e doloso), poisoning of foodstuffs, voluntary omission of the measures preventing industrial accidents, aggravated prejudice to public goods, deposit of hazardous substances and pollution of the air.  The medico-epidemiological expertise notably confirmed the link between the pollution in the plant and the town’s abnormally high rates of mortality for tumorous pathologies and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.  Worse: in the Tamburi and Borgo neighborhoods, close to the company, the mortality rate is four times higher than the average in the city, and heart diseases are three times more common.  Ilva workers also have respiratory and tumorous diseases because they are exposed to carcinogenic substances at work, such as aromatic polycyclic hydrocarbon and benzene.
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idemiological expertise notably confirmed the link between the pollution in the plant and the town’s abnormally high rates of mortality for tumorous pathologies and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Worse: in the Tamburi and Borgo neighborhoods, close to the company, the mortality rate is four times higher than the average in the city, and heart diseases are three times more common. Ilva workers also have respiratory and tumorous diseases because they are exposed to carcinogenic substa

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