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©I TA LY DA I LY, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10 , 2 0 0 0
©©By Elisa Cecchi
ITALY DAILY STAFF
Brindisi prosecutors placed under investigation 68 managers of a formerly state-owned petrochemical factory Thursday, after a four-year investigation found that 14 employees died from cancer and another 83 fell ill as a consequence of working at the plant. The 97 workers, according to a panel of oncologists and chemical experts, got cancer as a result of their prolonged exposure to vinyl chloride and other toxic substances. The 68 managers, some of whom are now retired, were charged with mass manslaughter and involuntary environmental disaster for not taking precautionary measures to safeguard employees’ health. The 270-hectare plant site — owned by Enichem, the chemical division of former state oil giant ENI; chemicals firm Montedison; EVC; and Celtica Ambiente — was shut down Thursday and impounded by police after four decades of activity. The plant changed hands several times since it was first opened in 1963. The first cases of illness were reported 20 years ago, shortly before Enichem — still state-owned at the time — took over the majority share in 1983. The state takeover was seen as part of the public efforts to promote the industrialization of the impoverished South. A similar investigation into deaths at another state-controlled petrochemical plant in Porto Marghera, near Venice, ended with a settlement that was unprecedented in scale and content. In the case of Marghera, a petrochemical company also controlled by Enichem along with private companies Montedison and Montefibre, the owners had to pay the largest settlement in Italy’s industrial history — 63.3 billion, divided among 320 former employees. The entity of the settlement was the result of the prosecutors’ ability to prove that the company must have been aware that vinyl chloride causes cancer — a fact ascertained by scientists since the beginning of the 1970s. The Brindisi investigation kicked off in 1996 after an employee, Luigi Caretto, reported cases of deaths and illnesses in the plant to Venice chief prosecutor Felice Casson, who launched the investigation on Marghera in 1994. Mr. Casson turned the investigation over to to Brindisi prosecutors. In 1998, Caret-to died of cancer. Reports on Friday suggested that the Brindisi investigation might actually prove more momentous than the one in Marghera, as the local government and environmental organizations said they would file for damages should the probe reveal that other cases of lung cancer in the Brindisi area were linked to the plant. The allegations were made after a recent report by the World Health Organization showed that the cases of lung cancer reported in the Brindisi area were by far more numerous than in the rest of Puglia. The incidence of lung cancer in the population was 50 percent higher in men and 35 percent higher in women than in the rest of the region. The plant, which is five times larger than the city of Brindisi itself, was recently sold to one of its previous co-owners — Celtica Ambiente — to be reconverted into an energy plant.
© Italy Daily/IHT 2000
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