English articles
Pfas in Europa: 40 anni di inquinamento, ma il profitto vince su tutto
18 settembre 2024
In the report titled "The future of European competitiveness", presented by former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi to the European parliament, the usual health or work dilemma emerged, but with a new protagonist: PFAS. Substances toxic to humans and the environment, they have been indicated as indispensable for the green transition, the process that, at least in intention, aims to rid the planet of fossil fuels through the development of green technologies. "A possible imminent ban on several PFAS substances," said the former prime minister and former president of the European Central Bank, "would have an impact on the use of substances necessary for the production of clean technologies (batteries and electrolysers), for which there are currently no alternatives.
Lavialibera is one of the 47 European media working on the Forever Pollution Project. The new investigation, title Forever Lobbying Project, exposes the real cost of PFAS pollution on the environment, science, and politics. Read our report (in Italian)
Draghi's words refer to the possible restriction requested by five European countries (Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden), which from 2022 are working on banning the production and use of these carcinogenic compounds, as shown by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Iarc).
For Draghi, therefore, PFAS such as Aquivion - produced by Syensqo Solvay and intended for green hydrogen - must continue to be produced, as there are no alternative chemical compounds that would allow Europe to compete on equal terms with China, where there is no restriction on the production of PFAS. Draghi's position is shared by the government led by Giorgia Meloni, which at the end of 2023, through the Ministry of Made in Italy, allocated around €3 million to the chemical pole of Spinetta Marengo, a hamlet of Alessandria.
It matters little that researchers from the National Research Council (CNR) have found traces of Aquivion in the Bormida torrent: progress comes first, even if it endangers the health of citizens. In the meantime, in an attempt to remedy the situation, the director of the Alessandria Asl Food Hygiene and Nutrition Department, Paolo Merlo, has proposed extending a municipal ordinance to prohibit the use of private wells for irrigation purposes.
An IARC study confirms that PFOAs are carcinogenic and toxic
On Wednesday 11 September, during the technical roundtable on PFAS convened at the Municipality of Alessandria, the CNR report highlighted the probable presence of new PFAS in the Solvay industrial discharge. These would be substances released during the production process of Aquivion, the flagship chemical compound of Syensqo Solvay. In order to be certain that it is indeed those compounds, however, we need the producing company to provide some reference material so that we can make a comparison with the suspected samples.
"At the moment we are looking for the compounds that the company has declared to produce, of the others we cannot deal with them," explains Marta Scrivanti, director of Arpa Alessandria (the regional agency for environmental protection), who then specified that she cannot ask the company directly for these standards.
PFAS, thousands of people in Piedmont drank contaminated water, says Greenpeace
A few days after Draghi's announcement and the technical roundtable where the presence of possible, new PFAS emerged, on 12 September the Piedmont Region organised a press conference chaired by the newly appointed Health Councillor Federico Riboldi, who announced the creation of a task force to periodically analyse the blood of people living near the Solvay plant, as well as the possible presence of toxic substances in the air and in food.For the task force, the region has allocated EUR 3 million and over the next 36 months, blood tests will be carried out on people living within 10 kilometres of the chemical plant.
'I am here to put my face to it, as a former mayor of Casale Monferrato I know what it means to get sick from exposure to dangerous substances. We will not leave you alone,' said Riboldi, in fact the first representative of the region to dialogue with the territory. The meeting had been requested in a loud voice by environmental and social associations, which in June had sent a pec for a meeting with the governor Alberto Cirio and the health department.
There are PFAS in the blood of those who live near the Solvay plant in Alessandria
During the meeting with the region, the blood data collected in the first regional biomonitoring were presented. "Only 29 people responded to the call for February 2024, a very small sample that nevertheless shows the presence of PFAS in all the subjects analysed," explained Enrico Bergamaschi, professor of occupational medicine at the University of Turin, who processed the analyses. Bergamaschi focused on the compounds present in the area, especially the two PFAS produced exclusively by Solvay, cC6O4 and the ADV mixture.
"The search brought the median to 22 micrograms per litre, when we excluded ADV and cC6O4 we obtained a median of 11 micrograms." The values found were framed within the limits set by the European community, which has set 20 micrograms per litre as the health pre-alert threshold: above this value, the risk of contracting diseases such as kidney and testicular cancer, ulcerative colitis and hypertension increases. In six people in the sample tested, the threshold values were exceeded and they were therefore invited to visit their general practitioner and undergo specialist examinations.
Bergamaschi compared his data with those collected in August 2023, independently, by a Belgian television station and three local associations (Stop Solvay, Anemos and Greenpeace). Bergamaschi added that 'the PFOA found in our sampling, carcinogenic since 2023, also has similar values in the two studies. The median is 7 micrograms per litre, but who knows how much it was in previous years, since it halves in the blood every three years'.
The main problem now is to understand the hazardousness of Solvay Syensqo's two products. "On Adv and cC6O4 we don't have enough scientific literature to understand their dangerousness. There is a study by the Milan labour clinic on Solvay workers, which shows that among workers there are impacts on lipids and platelets,' Bergamaschi noted. A correlation therefore with the metabolic system, which the scientific literature has confirmed for ten years now to be the target system of these substances.
During the assembly, the president of Legambiente Ovada, Michela Sericano, asked the councillor to intervene to curb the PFAS in the air. 'We know that our exposure is due to the substances emitted by the chimneys, the Region has every right to set limits'.
In the same vein, the Anemos association, whose spokesman Riccardo Ferriche recalled how 'the Region convened this meeting writing that we would discuss possible contamination by PFAS, but the term 'possible' is not accurate because we have been exposed to these contaminants for decades, so much so that we have them in our blood. So far we have spent our money to know how we are'.
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